


it's just a jump to the left

by lovelyorbent



Series: they will know me by my teeth. [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Big Gay Emotions, Biting, Butch Emotions, Butch/Femme, Cunnilingus, Emotions, F/F, Gender Issues, I did go a little heavier on it this time, Jealousy, Possessive Behavior, Sexual Roleplay, Time Travel, Tribadism, Vampire Sex, and yet no threesomes, lesbian culture is never having sex for less than two hours, sorry for the utter lack of threesomes in this, spike accidentally dirty talks herself, spikes everywhere, very half-hearted roleplay honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyorbent/pseuds/lovelyorbent
Summary: “Demon?” Buffy asked, turning to Spike, and saw her gaping.“Not yet,” she said.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: they will know me by my teeth. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983988
Comments: 43
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> apparently several other people were also all in on butch spike so i decided to just start posting this. there's going to be five chapters and four and a half of them are written so fingers crossed that i don't do like usual and just abandon this like a moron
> 
> also this ended up being a big gay exploration of my own big gay bullshit. it was going to be 100% porn, and there is porn in it, but as it turns out, butch spike does not play nice with non-butch spike. anyway, if you hate it, me too
> 
> title from the fact that you should watch rocky horror since it's halloween

There was a shimmer in the graveyard, hanging about a foot above the ground, six feet wide. Spike walked around it, squinting her eyes. Buffy, less concerned given the fact that nothing was issuing from it or making any noise, was watching her from a tombstone. Her vampire tinglies were as quiet as they ever got around Spike, which meant there were no other vamps in the area. “So? What’s the verdict?”

Spike glanced up at her, now kneeling on the ground looking through it. “Dunno. Never seen something like this. Can see right through it, but there’s definitely some sort of distortion there. Don’t think we’d better leave it alone. See what Anya says about it, maybe.”

Buffy was mostly just eyeing the powerful muscles in Spike’s legs pushing against the fabric of her jeans. “Mmhmm.”

“I’ll stay here and watch it if you want to go grab her.”

Buffy was pretty sure she could make out the bulge of whatever that muscle at the inside of Spike’s thigh was called.

“Slayer?” She wanted to lick that muscle. When Spike was all bent over like this, her shirt didn’t do anything to hide the muscles of her arm and side, and Buffy wanted to lick them too. “Oy, Slayer! Earth to Buffy!”

Buffy looked up, snapping out of her thoughts, only to see Spike grinning at her, sauntering over in that particular way she did when she was feeling sexy. “Yeah?”

“Penny for your thoughts, kitten,” Spike purred, and slipped her hands onto Buffy’s hips. She could switch so quickly, from normal to this all-sex attitude, hips swaggering, shoulders rolling to emphasize the muscles in them, her face doing a thing that Buffy could only describe as smoldering.

She blushed, and ran her own hands up from Spike’s hard abdomen up to her chest, where she laid one between her breasts, right where her heart would beat, if it still did that. Her voice was soft when she answered. “I was thinking that I wanted to lick you.”

Spike lifted her by the waist and sat her on the cemetery wall, putting their faces at level. Not that it had been Buffy’s incentive to come here tonight, but this was, out of all the cemeteries in town, the one with the wall best-suited to making out on, purely for the fact that it neutralized their height difference. “Be my guest, pet.”

Buffy bent forwards to lick her throat, inhaling the scent of smoke and dust and whiskey. That drew a groan as Spike stepped between her legs, slipping her hands up Buffy’s shirt and freezing when she encountered the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I don’t know how you didn’t notice that already,” Buffy told her, giggling. "What with how much you stare at my chest."

“I was distracted by what was on display already,” Spike told her, and lowered her head to kiss the tops of Buffy’s breasts, exposed by her blue top, one at a time. “You could tempt a saint. Tell me you’re not wearing any of those lacy little panties either, love.”

Buffy lowered her voice, and shimmied her body up against Spike’s, feeling hot under the collar. “Why would I when you always rip them?”

That earned her a growl, and then she was flat on her back on the brick under Spike, who was pinching at her nipples with one hand and tangling her fingers in Buffy’s hair with the other. Buffy spread her legs a little further around her hips and hooked her leg around Spike’s, arching up into the kiss Spike pressed into her lips.

Spike always kissed her like the world was ending. All hands and lips and teeth, biting her mouth until her lips were swollen and hot and tingling with sensitivity. She had thought, once, that it was a product of the way they were coming together — hot forbidden sex where Buffy left her cold afterwards — but it turned out that was just how she was, so passionate she burned under Buffy’s hands. By the time the kiss broke, Buffy tapping at Spike’s shoulder to let her know she’d run out of air, she was panting and a little light-headed, nipples hard under her shirt and her body hot with want. As soon as she had taken another breath, Spike’s mouth was on her again, hand skating down from her breast across her stomach to the waistband of her jeans.

Buffy took a moment to be torn between disappointment that they couldn’t just kiss without Spike getting into her pants and elation that Spike was getting into her pants, but Spike bypassed the waistband and just cupped her mound through her trousers, the pressure too faint through the fabric to do anything but make her huff with frustration. Unerringly, Spike found her opening through the fabric and pressed. “Ow,” she said, when the denim chafed her swelling flesh, and Spike chuckled against her lips.

“Weren’t kidding about not wearing panties, eh?”

“I never kid about panties,” Buffy murmured, and then Spike sat upright so abruptly that she whined. “What is it?”

“Something in the woods,” Spike growled, still looking in that direction, and Buffy pressed up to kiss her throat, drawing another laugh out of her. “Love, I’d like _almost_ nothing better than to ignore whatever that is and just die between these pretty legs of yours, but one of the things I’d like better is getting between them again later tonight.”

Buffy groaned. “I hate vampires. They have the _worst_ timing.”

“Well, why don’t you sit back and let me handle this one, then,” Spike offered. “Let me feel a little macho, yeah?”

She extricated herself from between Buffy’s legs, reaching between her own legs to adjust her jeans before she rolled out her shoulders and strode forwards, avoiding the shimmer and heading for the woods. “Demon,” she called back, when she was a few feet away from the treeline. “Heartbeat, plus it smells.”

Buffy, still lying on the wall, twiddling her stake, mmhmmed and waited for something interesting to happen.

Something interesting happened in the form of Spike getting tossed back out of the woods, scrambling off the ground and charging back into the fight, face going full vamp as she slammed her feet into the thing’s chest, the two of them going over onto the ground and tussling. Spike had a penchant for beheading, but Buffy, squinting, doubted that would work on this one, given the fact that its skin looked like metal. She watched, swinging her feet off the wall, and then hopped up, feeling the denim cut between her legs as she did so and readjusting herself with a wince.

“How do you not wear underwear so often?” she called out, hopping a little to get back in step before she jogged forwards towards the fight. “It hurts!”

“Cunt of steel,” Spike called back, sounding breathless even though, as Buffy was constantly pointing out to her, she didn’t _have_ to breathe. “Could take a punch straight to the cli — ”

She grunted, and there was the sound of thudding, then a little snarling which Buffy recognized as her vampire. She came to a stop over the two of them, about ten feet away from the shimmer, and watched Spike get one over on the demon and slam it into the ground, landing straddling its chest and taking the opportunity to punch it in the face. “Do you want something sharp and pointy, baby?” Buffy asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Could take it or leave it,” Spike said nonchalantly, and then the demon threw her over his head across a gravestone, which made an alarming cracking noise that, were it anyone else, would have Buffy worrying they were dead. With Spike it was more a question of how much she would whine about it later. She stepped in as the demon got to its feet, holding the sword she had swapped her stake out for on the way over.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” she asked, because she knew it would annoy Spike, and then the thing’s fist was slamming into her stomach, throwing her back towards the wall. “Oof,” she said, getting to her feet, and saw that Spike had mounted the thing’s back and had her hands on either side of its head as it staggered.

What happened next happened very fast. First, Spike growled. Then, the demon struggled, stumbling forwards and falling towards the shimmer with Spike on its back. After that, there was a sickening crack as Spike wrenched its head sharply to the side and a hissing pop, and Spike and the demon were on the ground.

Buffy ran forwards. Then stopped. There were _four_ bodies on the ground, and two of them were wrestling. She ran forwards again, and saw the demon lying on the ground, head twisted at a gruesome angle, and Spike wrestling the other demon — the _other demon_? — while the fourth body crawled away from the fight as fast as it could get. Buffy waited until the demon had the upper hand, and then drove her sword straight down through its back, the tip of it barely grazing Spike’s belly before the thing slid off the blade and onto her.

“Ugh, Slayer,” she grunted, muffled under its body. “Give us a hand, would you?”

Kicking the demon to the side, Buffy held out a hand to help her up. She was disheveled and had blood on her shirt, but she looked unharmed, with the exception of some bruises and scrapes. Spike wrapped an arm around her waist and bent to kiss her temple, and then kicked at the dead thing on the ground, eyes narrowed.

“Don’t know what happened there,” she said. “I was on the one’s back, and then it died, and then there was another one out of nowhere.”

“Good heavens,” said a voice from behind them, crisp and English and sounding very much like Giles.

Spike whirled. Buffy, who had momentarily forgotten they had company, turned more slowly, and was met with the sight of a young woman wrapped snugly into a high-collared purple dress, whose sleeves flared at the shoulders and whose poofy skirt descended all the way to the ground. She had long, curly dark hair pulled back into a knot on the back of her head, and a pair of round glasses perched on her nose. “Demon?” Buffy asked, turning to Spike, and saw her gaping.

“Not yet,” she said, sounding for all the world as if Buffy had _actually_ stuck her with the sword.

Buffy looked back at the young woman, and noticed that behind the glasses, the eyes were icy blue. She froze, and then looked at Spike. At the woman, and back at Spike. Cheekbones, check. Sensual mouth, check. Eyes, check. Vampire tinglies — “Oh my god,” she exclaimed. “You’re human Spike.”

“Jesus sodding christ,” Spike muttered, at the same time the other woman’s eyebrows quirked.

“I beg your forgiveness, Miss,” she said primly. “But I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about. Where am I?”

“Wrong place!” Spike snapped, while Buffy, amused, replied, “Sunnydale, California.”

“California — oh, heavens. The states?” The woman crossed herself, and Buffy burst into laughter. “There must be some mistake. I was in London — what is so amusing?”

Spike made a little subvocal snarl, and cuffed Buffy on the back of the head. “Get back in there,” she said to human Spike, whose eyes widened. “Go. Back to where you came from.”

“Wh — if I could do such a thing don’t you think I would?”

Spike pointed at the shimmer. “Shimmer. You. Make nice.”

“Wait,” Buffy said, breaking in with effort. “If she touches it again, what if there’s a third one of you?”

Spike groaned, and put her face in her hands. Human Spike spoke up, voice soft. “A _third_ one of her?”

“One,” Buffy said, pointing at her Spike. “Two,” she said, pointing at human Spike.

“Oh, I’m not — ” Human Spike said, laughing in a way that was both weirdly familiar and weirdly strange. The sound was more polite, but her lips stretched just the same. “That’s not — ”

“You from the future,” said Spike, and Human Spike snapped her mouth shut, sliding her glasses down her nose and stepping closer to peer at her.

“No,” she said, slowly. “Surely not.”

“Feast your sodding eyes,” Spike told her acidly, holding out her arms to the side. “You start working out and your fashion sense improves immeasurably. Congratulations.”

“Mother would never allow me — ”

“Mother doesn’t live forever, Mina,” said Spike shortly.

Buffy turned to her, and saw that her face was flat and annoyed. The human Spike — Mina — looked stricken. She was used to Spike being fairly emotional, at least for a vampire, but it was now plain that she was much more reserved than she had been before she had been turned. The pain on her face was obvious, and Buffy reached out to her Spike and tangled their fingers together, as if providing comfort to the one could provide comfort to the other.

“Slayer, run and fetch the witches,” Spike said. “We’ll stay here and make sure nobody else touches it.”

Mina blinked. Buffy, peering closer at her, noted that her eyebrow was already split. She would have to ask about how that had happened. “Slayer? _Witches_?”

“… can I take Mina?” Buffy asked, and got a glare in return. “Okay, okay. Going.”

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Xander said, gesturing at the two Spikes. Tara had insisted on waking Willow, who had insisted on calling Xander, and now all six of them were standing in the graveyard around the shimmer. “I mean, one is bad enough.”

“Sod off,” Spike said, holding up two fingers in a rude gesture.

“Is this like that time there were two of Xander?” Tara asked. “I mean, their auras are… different.”

“Or like that time there were two of Willow?” Xander pointed out.

“No to both,” said Buffy. “This isn’t good Spike/evil Spike or two halves of Spike. It’s just two Spikes. One is from the past.”

“So it _is_ sort of good Spike/evil Spike,” Xander replied.

Buffy shrugged one shoulder. “Well, kind of.”

Spike snorted. “Thanks for pretending you think I’m evil.”

“Shh,” Buffy told her, and turned to Mina. “Do you feel normal?”

Mina looked as if she was about to develop a permanent wrinkle between her brows. It was incredibly odd to look at her when she was dressed this way. Her face was still as handsome as it always was, but framed with long curly hair and sitting atop a cloud of purple fabric, it looked a little alien, too feminine to be correct. The glasses helped — the two Spikes looked almost entirely like different people — but in another way, they just magnified the strangeness. “I feel a little faint, Miss — ”

“Buffy,” Buffy told Mina when she paused, giving her a little smile, a faint echo of Spike’s own wicked grin.

“ — Miss Buffy.”

“That’s the corset,” Spike interrupted. “And stop flirting with her.”

Buffy gaped. “I’m _not_!”

“I’m not talking to you,” Spike said, and Mina looked horrified.

“I would not! It would be improper!”

“You’re going to go home and touch yourself right improperly thinking about her tits and then you’re going to pray for forgiveness and pretend it didn’t happen,” Spike told her bluntly. “But if you do it while you’re here it’s me you’re going to be begging.”

Mina gasped, stunned silent. Everyone else was silent too, either because they were suddenly forced to imagine Spike masturbating or because they had just remembered that Spike was actually capable of being scary sometimes.

Buffy felt like her head was spinning. “Spike, she’s _you_. Stop being mean.”

“That was _flirting_?” Xander asked.

“What, the good old _ooh I’m faint Miss blank_ routine never worked for you?” Spike replied. “Never worked for her, either, but it doesn’t stop her trying.” She poked her finger in Mina’s direction. “And by the way, it’s _Miss Summers_ to you.”

“ _Buffy_ is fine,” Buffy interjected. “Are you really jealous _of yourself_?”

Spike glared at her, which meant that, yes, she was.

Tara was eyeing the shimmer much the same way Spike had been doing an hour earlier. “This is… weird.”

“No kidding,” Xander said under his breath.

“Time to hit the books!” Willow chirped. “Do you think we can move it to the Magic Box?”

Tara pursed her lips, and then raised her hand to the shimmer. Nothing happened. “No,” she said, after a while. “Maybe we ought to do our research out here?”

“I’ll watch it for the rest of the night,” Spike growled, sounding sour. “Someone come relieve me at sunrise.”

“I’ll come back with books,” Willow offered. “I don’t have class until four.”

“I can come after that,” Tara said, “But not for long.”

Xander shrugged. “I’ll swing by after work at six.”

“And I’ll take evening shift,” finished Buffy. “I’ll come by at eleven?”

Mina raised one hand. “Shall I pitch in?”

“You _shan’t_ do anything unsupervised,” Spike said. “Buckle in for a long night.”

“I’m taking her home with me,” Buffy told her matter-of-factly. “She’s human, she can’t stay up all night. And she needs food, which you don’t have.”

“Slayer — ”

“Well, I’m out,” said Xander, and left, Willow and Tara in tow, evidently sensing that this was not a conversation they ought to be around for.

Buffy put her foot down. “That’s final,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re being like this, but I’m _taking_ her home.”

Without warning, Spike grabbed her around the waist and pulled her up against her body into a hard kiss, biting her lip until it split a little and then licking at it. When Buffy arose for air, she was sincerely regretting not having finished what they had started on the wall. But when she turned around, remembering they had company, Mina was staring at the two of them, eyes wide. “Mine,” Spike whispered in her ear, sending a liquid quiver down her spine, and then released her.

“Uh huh,” she agreed, and then said, “C’mon, Mina. I’ve got a couch with your name on it.”

“You’re bleeding, Miss Summers,” Mina told her softly, after they had walked a little while. “Here — ”

She handed over what Buffy knew must be a handkerchief, although she didn’t think she’d ever seen one in person. She took it and blotted at her lip. “Thanks. But really, just Buffy is okay.”

“Buffy,” Mina said, slowly, as if tasting the name on her tongue. “What an odd name.”

“Well, no one is named _Wilhelmina_ anymore, either,” Buffy informed her. “Ooh, wait, what’s your middle name?”

Mina looked sheepish, which was such an odd look on Spike’s face that Buffy almost burst out laughing again. “ — my counterpart told me not to tell you that.”

“Ugh, she thinks of everything.”

“Between us, Buffy,” Mina said, leaning closer, “It’s Clementine.”

Buffy nearly shrieked with laughter, but kept a lid on it because she was fairly certain Spike would come running if she made any noise like that. “ _Clementine_ ,” she said weakly, and almost had another laughing fit. “Wait, are you flirting with me again?”

Mina blushed. “I observed that the two of you were — close — ”

Buffy interrupted. “Together, romantically.”

“Is that average in this day and age? Spike told me that it was past the millennium, but I am still finding myself surprised by how much has changed.”

“Well, more average than it was when you were,” Buffy told her. “Tara and Willow, too.”

“Of course,” Spike said, nodding. That scary perceptiveness was still present, then. “Given the fact that every woman here I have thus far met is a friend of Sappho’s, I was wondering if by this time women have foregone men entirely. I always believed it was only a matter of time, the continuation of the species aside.”

Buffy giggled. “No. Just, um, this group has a lot of — friends of whoever.”

“Sappho,” Mina reminded her.

“Anyway, you’re about to meet my sister, who is very much not a friend of Sappho, as far as I know. At least she’s all mooning about boys right now, although I guess so was I when I was her age. Oh, we should have stopped by your crypt. I don’t think any of my pajamas are going to fit you.”

“My — _crypt_?”

“Oh, yeah. Vampire, crypt.” Buffy waved her hand. “You’re all about classics. I mean, Spike is.”

“ _Vampire_?”

Buffy gave her a look, and resolved to have words with Spike later. “What did you guys _talk_ about while I was gone?”

“In large part, what I was and was not to say and do in your presence,” Mina answered.

“And she never mentioned she was a vampire?”

“Heavens, no.” Mina adjusted her glasses nervously. “Are you, as well?”

Buffy laughed. “No, no. Actually, I kill vampires. It’s a long story.”

The walk to Revello Drive was uneventful except for the few people who passed them and looked at Spike as if she was from another planet. Which, all right, hoop skirts weren’t exactly average for the aughts, but this was Sunnydale. Stranger things had happened. Buffy opened the door and flicked on the lights on the porch and in the entryway. Mina jumped, and looked at them in wonder.

“My sister is sleeping, so you have to be quiet. I’ll go get you some clothes to sleep in.”

Mina was sitting primly on the couch when Buffy returned with Willow’s old football jersey and a pair of pajama pants. She had several pins in her mouth, and was continuing to pluck them out of her hair, until it came tumbling down around her face, curling over her shoulders. “Miss Summers, I do hate to impose, but could you assist me with my corset?” She turned around and swept her hair forwards over her shoulder, indicating the laces at the back.

Was this flirting? What counted as flirting in the Victorian era? Well, Spike didn’t have to know. Buffy started picking at the fastenings. “Buffy, please,” she said as she concentrated on undoing the knots.

When Mina had shrugged it off, apparently unashamed for Buffy to see her in some state of undress, although there was still fabric covering all the relevant parts of her, Buffy realized that she was _smaller_ than Spike. The same height — tall for a woman — but slimmer, not so broad at the shoulders. Without all that heavy muscle that Buffy spent so much time thinking about licking. She was going to absolutely swim in the football jersey. Dawn’s clothes would probably be a better fit.

When Mina had changed, looking puzzled by the clothes, which she elected to wear over whatever her undergarment was called, Buffy yawned and made for the stairs. “There’s a blanket under the table,” she told Mina. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Good night, Buffy,” Mina said, softly.

“Good night,” Buffy replied.

The next morning, she woke up to Spike crawling into bed with her, fully nude. “Mm,” she said, and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend’s neck. “Morning.”

“Morning, love,” Spike told her, and dropped an arm around her waist, her breasts pressing into Buffy’s back. “When’s work?”

“When’s now?”

“Six thirty.”

“Two hours,” Buffy mumbled, and snuggled back into her. “I’m opening. And you’re cold.”

“I’m dead,” Spike told her, and pressed her ice-cold feet into Buffy’s legs, making her shriek and squirm away. “Bet you could warm me up.”

“I don’t think we’ve _ever_ had sex for less than two hours,” Buffy replied. “Keep your hands off me.”

“Just let me eat you out,” Spike wheedled. “’ll make it so good for you, Slayer. Put my tongue in you nice and easy, let you rub yourself off against my nose — ”

“Ugh, shut up,” said Buffy, squirming again, but Spike held her fast, pressing kisses to the back of her neck.

“Suck your clit until you scream for me,” Spike continued.

“I’m going to stake you and then be sexually frustrated for the rest of my life.”

Spike chuckled. “Can’t have that. Crying shame to let a pussy this perfect be lonely.”

“If I let you go down on me _once_ — ”

“Scout’s honor, I’ll be good.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes at her. “Well, I don’t believe _either_ of those things. But fine, make it quick.”

“ _Make it quick_ ,” Spike mocked, and then ducked under the covers to worm her way between Buffy’s legs, kissing Buffy’s belly and then her hips until she was squirming under her. Cool fingers slipped her panties off, and then there were cool shoulders pushing her knees apart, and Spike was mouthing her way down Buffy’s thighs towards her center.

It became apparent that she had no intention of making it quick almost immediately. Her typical attitude towards going down on Buffy was voracious, mouth seeming to be everywhere and fingers relentlessly seeking out everywhere that would make her writhe. This was obviously going to be one of Spike’s rare forays into pure tenderness, where she nuzzled into Buffy’s pussy like she was kissing open a flower and took little sipping licks with her tongue that mostly just made Buffy beg her for fingers. “I _knew_ you weren’t a boy scout,” Buffy muttered, which drew a laugh from under the covers, and then a soft hum against her clitoris.

She threaded her fingers into Spike’s hair and pulled on it to try to speed her up, but all that got her was a vibrating groan against her entrance. “ _Spike_.” When she tried to grind her hips up against Spike’s face, all _that_ got her was hands holding her hips down, and if they got into a superpowered strength contest here, they’d break the bed. She made an annoyed noise.

“Be a good girl, Buffy,” Spike murmured wetly against her cleft, which made her thighs tighten and her cunt ache. If she had been about to drip, Spike fixed that with a lap of her tongue and her nose pressing gently up around her clit. “Soaked through, there’s a love.”

When Buffy made a soft abandoned noise and tightened her fingers in her short hair again, Spike rewarded her by sucking gently on her, tongue momentarily hardened enough to give her some good friction before she went back to kissing her open, laying little strokes of her tongue through her folds and dipping, occasionally, between them.

The one benefit to doing things this way, other than the fact that it felt good, was that it was easier to be quiet when Spike wasn’t going a million miles a minute. She could hear herself quietly making little _ahs_ , and occasionally whispering Spike’s name, but she wasn’t as likely to wake Dawn as she might have been. Which was, possibly, Spike being considerate, of Dawn’s ears if not Buffy’s time.

A little soft suction on her clit again got her squirming against Spike’s face, her legs spreading a little wider in hopes of tempting her into slipping her a finger or two, but Spike’s hands stayed resolutely on her hips, working her up with her lips and tongue and, occasionally, so-soft-Buffy-almost-missed-them hints of teeth.

Buffy sighed and settled in for the long haul, petting her fingers through Spike’s hair to break it out of the gel as Spike lapped at her like her goal was to drink as much of Buffy as she could take in. She could feel herself swollen and gushing, the entire apex of her thighs wet with saliva and slick as Spike delved between them.

Occasionally Spike nosed at her clit, just hard enough to send little jolts through her, or opened her mouth to suck on it, but mostly she just pushed Buffy slowly through arousal and into desperation until she was taking in huge sobbing breaths and whining in the back of her throat for more, pleas that Spike responded to by humming against her.

Her orgasm broke over her without really noticing it creeping up, her thighs trembling with the exertion of tolerating Spike between them without wrapping around her. Spike had her tongue shallow up inside her, fingers circling her clit so lightly that it almost wasn’t enough, but when she got just a little deeper and her nose bumped up against her where she was slickest, it was just enough of a shove to send her over, shuddering and gasping and pulling at Spike’s hair as she kept mouthing at Buffy, licking her clean and leaving her so sensitive she thought she could probably get off again in quick succession if Spike just kept going.

Work, she thought ruefully, and shoved her away to make sure she didn’t try any funny business.

Spike’s face was slick with her as she crawled up Buffy’s body to kiss her, which Buffy always found vaguely gross, but whenever she made a face at it Spike just said, “whatever you’ve got, Slayer, you’ve already got it,” and she didn’t really feel like pushing her out of bed today. Instead she just let herself be kissed back into the sheets and then reached out for her clock, shoving Spike to the side and rolling out of bed on unsteady legs when she read the face of it. “You are in _so_ much trouble.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Spike purred, and cracked her jaw. Her hair was sticking up wildly from where Buffy had been running her fingers through it.

Buffy was rushing around the room grabbing her work clothes, or at least rushing as much as she could when she couldn’t really feel her toes. “I need to shower — make breakfast — get dressed — get Dawn off to school — ”

“Relax, I’ll handle Dawn and breakfast. You want company in the shower?”

Buffy threw a shoe at her. “I do _not_ need any more of your _company_.”

Spike caught it before it hit her in the face, and threw it towards the door. “Nah, but I’ll bet you want it, what with how you’re walking like a newborn fawn.”

She blushed. “Go make breakfast. And put on some clothes first! Dawn has already seen way too much of you.”

Spike rolled lazily off the bed to grab the clothes she had been wearing the night before, laying in a pile at the foot of the bed as Buffy was rushing for the bathroom.

When Buffy came downstairs in her Doublemeat Palace uniform, she was standing in front of the stove, pressed close to it to avoid the patch of sunlight behind her. When Buffy got close to her to steal bacon out of the pan, she smelled sex and realized that Spike hadn’t come into the bathroom and therefore hadn’t washed her face. “That is disgusting.”

“Nah, not so. Love your — ” Spike broke herself off and finished, lamely, “ — hair.”

“Hi, Dawn,” Buffy said, without looking behind her.

“So who’s on the couch?” Dawn asked, grabbing a cereal bowl.

Spike pointed the tongs at her. “Hey, I’m making eggs.”

Dawn wrinkled her nose, looking so familiar that it took Buffy a minute to realize that it was one of her own expressions appearing on her sister’s face. “You always make eggs and you’re always here. Eggs are boring. I’m having cereal. Who’s on the couch?”

“Spike’s past self. We’re calling her Mina,” Buffy replied.

“Huh,” said Dawn. God, this house was so weird that she barely even seemed surprised. “How’d that happen?”

“Spike touched a magic spot and now there are two of her.”

Spike pointed the tongs at Buffy this time. “Spike got _thrown through_ a magic spot, ta. And you’ve got lipstick on your teeth, love.”

“Oh, nuts,” Buffy said, and dashed off to the bathroom. “I’m going to be so late!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guess i'm gonna update on saturdays and wednesdays. this is now six chapters thanks to me impressing all my sad butch feelings onto butch spike. unfortunately no more porn until chapter 6. also i don't do that cool good writer shit where you edit things and plot things out before you write them so this will be out on tuesdays and saturdays even when it fucking sucks and is just me pretending to be funny
> 
> i swear to god this was intended to just be threesome porn when i first started writing it but then spike was like nah. which is funny because frankly, in terms of who in buffy is most likely to fuck their body double, i would say spike is up there with anya.
> 
> also this is the one chapter from spike's perspective. mostly because we're following mina and they don't hang out much

“Poor time management skills,” Spike said to Dawn as Buffy dashed upstairs. She raised an eyebrow, looking, to put it mildly, unconvinced, then put her elbows up on the counter and smiled.

“So past you is human, right? Otherwise the sun is totally about to hit her.”

“Yeah. No dust pile on the couch.”

“So she can take me to the beach?”

“She can’t drive, cars haven’t been invented yet. And you’ve got school.”

“You’re no fun.”

“You’re not old enough for the kind of fun I am.” As Buffy rushed back through the kitchen, makeup fixed, Spike passed off a paper towel with six strips of bacon wrapped up in it. Buffy took it like a runner’s baton, without looking, and whisked out the door. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“No,” Dawn said, and took off her sweater to reveal a lacy white top that was definitely stolen from Buffy, since it barely covered her navel. Spike thought about putting in the objection Buffy was sure to have, but on the other hand, she’d had a front-row seat to the sorts of things _Buffy_ had worn at Dawn's age, and they were arguably worse. At least eighty percent of Dawn’s legs weren’t hanging out.

“Cute.”

“You think so? I have art class with this boy — ooh, hey, Mina!”

Spike turned around and saw herself standing in the doorway. That was still such an eerie bloody feeling, she thought. Like looking into a mirror a century old. Although, when she had looked like that, she’d never worn Willow’s ex’s sports jersey or Buffy’s stripey little pajama pants, which were severely too short for her.

“I’m Dawn,” Dawn said, sticking out her hand. “Buffy’s sister.”

Mina smiled at her, and took it. “The younger Miss Summers. Buffy told me about you.”

Dawn reclaimed her hand to start shoving cereal into her face. “Can I braid your hair?”

Mina blinked at her. Spike blinked at both of them. Dawn started giggling.

“You don’t look anything alike, but _that_ look is just the same.”

Spike turned away so as not to give her the satisfaction of seeing any similarity between them. She hadn’t seen a mirror in over a hundred bloody years, and she didn’t particularly want to imagine what the expression Mina was currently wearing looked like on her face. “Want eggs, prat?”

Dawn frowned. “Spike, don’t be rude.”

“Pratt with two t’s,” Mina explained to her. “Although it would be more courteous to say _Miss Pratt_ , since I am a lady.”

Spike snorted. A _lady_. Sure. “No, I meant it the other way.”

Mina rolled her eyes, which set Dawn off again. “You are very welcome to braid my hair,” she told the teenager, voice prim and polished in a way that Spike had almost forgotten she had ever sounded like. “I confess I am unfamiliar with how it is acceptable to wear one’s hair in this day and age, so your help would be appreciated.”

Spike growled at the bacon, which was beginning to turn black, and moved it off the fryer to start eating it out of the pan. “You’ve got twenty minutes, so you’d better make that snappy, Bit.”

“Yes, _dad_ ,” Dawn said, and threw her cereal bowl into the sink. “Come on and sit,” she said to Mina, who obeyed. “Ooh, let me get my brush. Buffy never lets me do this.” She disappeared up the stairs.

“Are you going to persist in being rude?” Mina asked, when she was gone.

“Was thinking about it, yeah.” Mina pursed her lips. Spike narrowed her eyes at the expression. She had _better_ not pick that habit up from Buffy. Annoyed, she tossed one of Joyce’s plates down on the counter in front of her and tossed the pan onto a trivet. “Here. Eggs. No one else wanted them, so knock yourself out.”

Dawn came back in with her brush in one hand and a hair tie wrapped around her wrist. Mina winced at the brush going through her hair, and Spike barked a laugh as she finished the bacon. She remembered all too well the challenge of putting those curls into any sort of respectable order. They tangled at the slightest provocation and they hurt like hell when you tugged a brush through them. Dawn did an admirable job wrestling them into a french braid, but there were still a load of little curls by her temples that wouldn’t be tamed. “Gonna need pins for those,” she said, and Dawn looked at her like she had gone insane.

“Excuse me, this is the 21st century. _Hairspray_.” And then she was gone again up the stairs.

Spike cupped her hand over her mouth to call after her. “Shaving the sides works better, in my experience.”

Mina, too, twisted to look after her. “The younger Miss Summers is certainly energetic. I believe I like her.”

Spike let out a little huff of air, watching her start tucking into the eggs. For someone who was the biggest bloody nancy in all the land — a _lady_ — she was taking this remarkably well. “Me too.”

“Well, it certainly is good to know that you like _someone_. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Hey!”

Mina blushed and looked chastised, and that was more like the self she had been familiar with. Bashful, timid, and terminally sodding boring. If she started spouting off ten-dollar words it would just complete the picture of who she’d been when she’d had a soul. Not worth Drusilla’s time of day, let alone Buffy’s.

Dawn reemerged with a can and made quick work of the flyaways, then grabbed Mina by the hand and tugged her into the hall, presumably towards the mirror. Spike struggled not to be a little jealous of the ability to look in one. Dru had always had to do her eyeliner when she had been into that sort of punk, because it wasn’t really possible to learn how to do it without a reflection.

She heard her own voice say, “Well, that _is_ remarkable.”

“Niblet, school,” she yelled at Dawn.

“Ugh, who cares if I’m a little late?”

That was a good point. Being late to bloody high school was one of those things that wasn’t particularly evil that having no soul made you care less about. But after Buffy’s social services scare, she’d been militant about it, which meant that it was Spike’s job to be militant about it. “Big sis. By extension, I have to. Skedaddle.”

Dawn did, with a reproachful look, then poked her head back in to say, “See you later, Mina!”

Mina smiled at her, eyes kind behind those big round glasses that Spike had forgotten she had ever worn. She had chosen them, she remembered, because they softened her face. The softening was making her want to smash something, now. “I look forward to it, Miss Summers.”

Not if Spike could bloody help it. She was going straight back into that arsehole in time the second the witches figured out what was going on. And in the meantime, she was staying far away from either Summers girl, or any of her little friends. Or, god forbid, any of _Spike’s_ friends.

“How’d you like a tour of Sunnydale’s fine sewer system?” Spike asked, after the door had slammed shut behind Dawn.

“What?”

Spike pointed to herself. “Vampire. Sunlight. Don’t mix. Oh, wait, I forgot to mention.” She pointed at herself again. “Vampire.”

“Yes, Miss Summers — that is, Buffy — did tell me.”

“Get shoes then.”

When they emerged into the crypt, Mina peered around, squinting, and then Spike remembered that she couldn’t see in the dark any better than the average human and lit one of the lamps. “Good heavens, do you _live_ here?”

“ _Good heavens_ ,” Spike mocked. “Stop saying that, you sound ridiculous. And yeah, I live here.”

“It’s very — cold.”

“Don’t feel cold anymore, so not a problem.”

“And dark.”

“Can see in the dark.”

“Yes, but you bring Miss Summers here?”

“Both of ‘em.” Mina looked horrified, and Spike held up her hands. “Not like _that_. Dawn’s a kid.”

Well, she was around the same age Buffy had been when she’d tried to kill her the first time. But Spike figured Mina didn’t need to know that. She definitely did not want to deal with the emotional fallout of Miss Weepy Poet discovering that Spike had a) met Buffy when she was a teenager, or b) had repeatedly tried to kill her, and several times nearly succeeded. She knew herself well enough to know that it would get her self-flagellating, and no one needed that. “Ah. Of course,” Mina said. “My apologies for the assumption.”

“Look, we need to get you proper clothes, that’s the only reason you’re here. You’re dressed in Red’s boyfriend’s castoffs.”

“ _Boy_ friend?”

“Oh, yeah. Her experimental phase.”

“Will you explain something to me?”

“Mm.”

“Why _Spike_?”

“Killed a bunch of idiots with railroad spikes. Also, some ponce ruins ‘Mina’ with a trashy little children’s book in a couple of years.”

“ _Killed_ — ?”

Spike gestured at herself. “ _Vampire_.”

“Ah.” Spike threw a pair of jeans at her, and then a white shirt. If they were going to do this, they might as well color-code, not that it could be difficult to tell them apart, given the hair and the glasses and the everything. Mina did not catch them — Spike guessed that maybe that was too _manly_ , catching things in the air — and they fell to the floor. She bent to pick them up. “Trousers?”

“You’ll prefer ‘em, trust me. Wait, are you still wearing drawers under that?”

“I thought you would prefer if I did not get fully — ” Mina waved her hand.

“ — starkers — ”

“ — nude in front of your — ”

“ — girl. Yeah, I do prefer.”

The idea of Buffy having any chance to get attached to a version of her who would do girly shite with her or have a conscience made her want to strangle her former self right here in the bloody crypt. The two of them looked at each other. “Yes, and while we’re being terribly rude to each other,” Mina added, “My apologies, but I simply have to ask — _why_?”

“Because I bloody love her. And, well, fuck’s sake, look at her. Perfect hair, perfect tits, perfect face — strongest girl I ever met, bravest — not to mention she fights like a demon and she shags like a — ”

Mina was bright red. “Good lord. Please. That isn’t what I meant.”

Spike paused, and looked at her searchingly, then blinked. “Oh. Because I give head like a sodding champion.” She held up her fingers in a V and then wagged her tongue between them.

She was treated to watching her own face screw up with disgust, her mouth curling down even as her blush didn’t subside. “You know, we really aren’t very much alike.”

She snorted. “Good.”

There was silence again.

“Get dressed,” Spike finally said. “I’m going to go eat.”

The cold pig’s blood tasted worse than usual when she was pissed off. She could heat it, sure, usually did, but given the night she’d had, she wanted to put her teeth in something, even if it was just a sodding plastic bag. God, she missed biting into something alive. Maybe Buffy would — well, no. She wouldn’t ask that of her, because then Buffy would give her that look that was half-horrified and half-puzzled, like she couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t just like Angel. Who, the massive poof, had apparently had to be smacked around before he would take any of her blood. It was like he wasn’t even a real bloody vampire.

“Limp-dicked wanker,” she muttered.

“Who?”

Spike withdrew her fangs and turned around to face Mina, who was now wearing jeans and a t-shirt that hung on her thinner frame, looking uncomfortable. “Buffy’s ex.”

“I see.”

“Absolute ponce.”

“Mm. Is that — ”

Spike looked down at the dripping bag in her hands, and turned around, shifting and latching back onto it. She heard bare feet behind her, and shifted back before Mina could come up behind her. “Yeah, it’s blood.” She licked a trail of it off her wrist, and Mina wrinkled her nose. “Oh, nut up. It’s what I eat. Go away.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise I have to get a dish dirty for this.” Well. If she didn’t want precious sodding Mina to see her go all demon, she had to. And, for some reason, she _didn’t_ want that. The idea of it turned her stomach in a peculiar way. She’d never seen it herself, although she had some idea of what it must look like, and she didn’t particularly want this version of her — who would nearly cry with joy to wake up undead in Dru’s arms in under a year, feeling overwhelmed but free for the first time in her life — to get a look at the future.

“May I ask you another question?”

“No. My crypt, my rules. And I’m going to bed.”

“Didn’t you only just get out of bed?”

“Wasn’t _sleeping_ in there,” Spike said, and smirked at her. Mina blushed again, and Spike started cackling. “Christ, I forgot you’re a virgin. Yeah, prepare for _that_ to change.” Repeatedly, and with emphasis. The only thing she’d wanted as much as blood when she’d risen was the juice from between Dru’s legs. Angelus and Darla — who presumably had thought Dru was making herself a playmate and not a lover — had sneered at her wild-eyed desperation, but Dru had just cooed at her and given her what she wanted, even though she had to have been shit in bed then.

Mina was squirming. “I’ve never considered — intimacy — particularly alluring.”

Pft. She’d almost forgotten trying to convince herself of that. Sure, you know, slender Aphrodite had overcome her with longing for a girl, and all, but it wasn’t _sexual_. Perish the sodding thought. “Yeah, you have. You just got _really_ into the whole courtly love shit. I was you, remember? I know exactly what dirty little thoughts you have when you see Cecily. Tits all shoved up to her chin by that corset. If she so much as offered you the opportunity to suck one of them like you’ve been dreaming about you’d cream those stupid poofy bloomers.”

Mina stammered wordlessly. Spike could taste arousal on the air, and laughed at the irony of it. Looking at Buffy as this shivering virgin was probably a religious experience. Even a little dirty talk and she couldn’t bloody hide just how sexual that longing was. Just imagining Cecily’s tits would do it for her.

“Yeah, she’s going to break your bloody heart and then you’re going to get dead.” She turned back around and vamped out to sink her teeth back into the bag. When she had finished, she tossed it in the bin and strode back to the hole in the floor. “’night. TV’s right there.”

She jumped down.

When she woke up, she momentarily and mercifully forgot what had happened, and was pleased to wake up smelling Buffy, even if the scent was a little stale. Then she recalled exactly _why_ she had spent an hour eating Buffy out slow and sweet, and her good mood soured. “Still there?” she yelled up the ladder.

“Yes,” echoed back at her after a few moments.

“Small mercies,” she grumbled, and shucked off her clothes to take a shower, get Buffy off her face, as little as she liked to see her go. She slicked her hair back again when it was dry, selecting a purple button-down that always made Buffy look at her like she was edible and wriggling back into the same jeans. Didn’t hurt to remind her of why she’d given her a chance. She rolled up the sleeves and tucked it in, leaving it mostly unbuttoned and ascending the ladder into the main room to see Mina hunched over near the door, reading a book by the moonlight. Spike strode over to her and looked at the cover. Medusa. She smirked. Yeah, that was a good one. “Enjoying yourself?”

“It took me quite some time to find this,” Mina said. “You don’t keep very many books.”

“You just didn’t find them,” Spike told her. There weren’t a load of good places in a place like this to safely store books, and none of them were upstairs. “You know, there’s lights up there.”

“I couldn’t find any lamp oil or matches.”

Spike rolled her eyes. “Look, you _just_ missed Edison.”

“Mr. Thomas Edison?”

“All right, you know who he is, but he hasn’t hit it big yet. Anyway, I’ve got electricity. Know you know what that is, given you were at Buffy’s last night.”

“Yes, well, they were all on while I was there. How very interesting that you have them here! May I see?”

Spike turned on the lights in the crypt. She didn’t use them most of the time, preferred the candles, but it was almost worth it to see the look of wonder on her own face. There were a few things she missed about being human, and one of them was being surprised. Not that she was never surprised now, but it was never by anything good. She had just seen too many things to feel the full impact of them anymore unless her unlife was threatened.

“That’s wonderful,” Mina said, mouth hanging open as she stood and wandered around the space. “How beautiful. They look like stars, veiled in the shadows.”

“Remember what we talked about: _no_ poetry,” Spike told her. “We’re shit at it. And Buffy doesn’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t fit my image.”

“Well, but isn’t the point of love to share everything in your heart?”

“Poetry’s not in my heart anymore, so no problem.”

“I beg your pardon, but it seems to me she also didn’t know your middle name.”

“ _Didn’t_?”

Mina’s eyes widened with fright, and Spike knew she had mistakenly put a little too much oomph into that facial expression. She restrained it with a little snarl. “I’m never going to live this down. I’ve got to go kill something.”

She was treated to a frown and Mina’s eyebrows quirking up in the center. “I apologize. I thought you had already — eaten.”

“Oh, yeah, nah, this is just for fun.”

If anything, that made the expression worse. Which — well, yeah, Spike could see why. She had been a good little Christian girl in most ways, back when she had been Mina. With the exception of that little unholy attraction. And good little Christian girls did not kill things, particularly not for fun.

“Stay here,” she said, after a while. “Keep the door closed while I’m not here, and stay inside. Lots of nasties in this town. They stay out of here, for the most part, because I’m nastier. So you’ll be safe here.”

“I’d like to come, actually.”

Spike stared at her. “ _What_?”

“Well, to — to be frank, to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to keep an eye on _you_.”

“I shall run and scream if anything terrifies me,” Mina told her primly.

“Thing about us creatures of the night, pet, is that we like the whole running and screaming thing. It’s like foreplay.”

“Foreplay?”

Spike blinked, and then made a growling noise. “Right, I can’t remember whether that hadn’t been invented by human men yet either or whether you’re just naive. Anyway, it’s where you get your girl warmed up before you fuck her. Kissing and petting and that.”

Mina squirmed, looking uncomfortable. Spike hated that look on herself. Hated most things about this version of herself. The only good things about her had remained when she had been turned, and then she’d been free to grow a pair.

“Well, all right,” she said. “I _won’t_ run and scream.”

“You’re not coming and that’s final.” She tugged her coat on. “This place is bloody dangerous, and I don’t know if the deal here is you die, I die.”

“I’ll just follow you,” Mina told her. “Unless you care to chain me to the wall.”

“Well, now, there’s an idea.”

“Absolutely not — ” Buffy said from behind her. Spike, who had known perfectly well that she was there, rolled her eyes. “ — _Clementine_.”

The look Spike gave Mina at that made her quail, which was as it should be. “Starting to think dying might be worth it to strangle _you_.”

“Nope,” Buffy told her, popping the p. “No killing of past selves. Do you want to get dinner?”

Both Spike and Mina replied, “Yes,” at the same time, although Mina added a _please_.

Buffy beamed, and Spike softened, because god knew her black little heart couldn’t resist a smile from Buffy Summers. “Fine, you can come too.”

“I was asking her, actually,” Buffy said. “Since you don’t need to eat.”

She snarled, but more the kind that made Buffy pat her on the arm than the kind that made anyone run in fear. “Well, I’m _coming_.”

“Great, you can pay.”

Buffy was dressed in jeans, high-heeled boots, and a loose white blouse, which meant she had been home after work. It also meant that she was expecting better than the burger bar. “Anybody find anything?” Spike asked, because Dawn probably had the skinny, and Buffy had probably pumped her for it.

“They think it’s some kind of time travel vortex.” Buffy waved her hand. “Apparently Willow threw a bug through it and it came out some kind of larva.”

“Did she try killing the larva, see what happened?”

“You’re not killing Mina, Spike,” Buffy told her, in the tone of a mother chastising a child for the fifth time.

“Actually, I believe she meant it for our safety,” Mina piped in. “Earlier she was contemplating the possibility that if I die on patrol she might also. And it certainly would be helpful information to know, whether or not the past can affect the future. I suspect not overly much, but confirmation would be — well, ideal.”

Spike threw up her hands. “Thank you. Have a _little_ faith, Slayer.”

Buffy shrugged. “Well, you have been a real bitch to her for no reason. Wait, have you tried hitting her?”

“Wh — ” said Mina, before Spike wound up and smacked her across the face, then doubled over at the splitting pain that went like lightning through her brain. “Ah,” she gasped, holding her cheek, which was quickly reddening. “What on _earth_ was that for?”

“See if I could,” Spike gritted out, massaging her temples.

Buffy explained: “She has a chip in her brain that makes her unable to hurt humans. How many hours have you two spent together now and you never got around to mentioning this?”

“I don’t exactly brag about it.”

“She’s _you_ , who do you have to save face for?”

“She’s _not_ me.”

Buffy smiled over her shoulder at Mina. “Can you give us a moment?” She grabbed Spike by the wrist and hauled her down the steps, far enough out of earshot to whisper furiously. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“What? Nothing.” Buffy stared at her, clearly not buying it. Spike held out for a few seconds. Then a few more. Then she caved. “I just don’t bloody like her hanging around.”

“Why not? She seems nice.”

Spike ground her teeth together. “That’s the sodding problem.”

“You don’t like that we’re seeing the not-evil version of you?” Buffy seemed as if she was very unimpressed with this explanation. Her little hands were on her hips, and she looked like she was working up to scolding Dawn for not doing her homework.

“The _not-me_ version of me.” She sighed. “Look, think of it like this, love. If pretty little airheaded teen you who’d never seen a vampire came bouncing out of that thing, how would you like me meeting her?”

Something passed over Buffy’s face. “Probably not as much as _you’d_ like it.”

“Yeah, I mean, it would be dead funny, wouldn’t it, but you’d be bloody well embarrassed even if she was perfectly nice. This is a person who I’m not anymore and haven’t been in a long time.”

Buffy blinked, and then said something that would usually make Spike preen at how well the two of them knew each other. “Are you worried I’ll like her better?”

Spike knew that she had flinched by the way Buffy’s eyebrows drew together. “ _No_ ,” she said quickly. “It’s just like — well, you know, it’s like you’re seeing me without clothes or skin on. You know what I mean, it’s just bloody weird.”

Buffy rolled up onto the balls of her feet to press a kiss against her mouth, and gave her another smile while she pulled back. “Like you care about people seeing you without clothes on.”

Spike took in a deep breath, and gave her a grin. “When you’ve got goods like this, why not show ‘em?” She took another breath — Buffy smelled of night air, jasmine shampoo, and, faintly, of fryer oil, like she always did now. Then she turned over her shoulder and called to Mina. “If you think electric lights blew your mind, just wait until you find out about sushi.”

Buffy took her hand, and then frowned. “Wait, they didn’t have electricity when you were born?”

“Got big a little after I died.”

“So if I show her, like, a TV — ”

“You’d blow her sodding mind. Tell her a woman just got done running England. Hell, tell her what happens in the forties and I bet she’ll cry.”

Mina, who had come up behind them, stuck her head between them. “A woman just got done running England?”

“Thatcher in ’90.”

“Well, that’s capital for her,” Mina said enthusiastically. “I always knew we’d get the vote.”

“You can even get a real degree now,” Spike told her. “And you’re wearing trousers. Bully for you. Thatcher was an absolute bitch. And that’s coming from me. Now come on.”

Mina tagged along after them when she set off into the graveyard, Buffy in tow. “What happened in the forties?”

Buffy’s green eyes popped open and she looked up at Spike in a panic. “Um. War?”

Mina sighed. “Well, unfortunately, someone is always at war.”

When Spike opened her mouth, Buffy stepped on her foot.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my new goal is to mention spike's terrible middle name every chapter of this monstrosity
> 
> happy halloween, have three xanders. come roleplay spuffy with me on omegle

Watching Mina discover modern restaurants — and sushi — and then, wasabi, when Spike had told her to try some and Buffy hadn’t intervened in time — was sweet. She had Spike’s face, but it was so much softer, and her mouth was prone to falling open in a polite little o shape when she was surprised. She was always twiddling her fingers, playing with the end of her hair, pushing her glasses up her nose. More than anything else, she reminded Buffy of a young Willow; uncertain and self-conscious. She blushed easily and bit her lip sometimes and always sat with her legs crossed, like she was shrinking in on herself. She didn’t joke, laughed quietly, and was so painfully earnest that Spike had taken to kicking her in the shin when she was about to say something embarrassing.

Spike, for her part, was still making with the jealousy. She sat with one arm slung around Buffy’s shoulders and was acting a lot more snarly and acidic than usual. Sitting next to Mina, the differences between the two of them were obvious. Spike sat with her knees open, shoulders open, body lounging, a great cat who wasn’t worried about who could get at her belly because she was so certain of her ability to defend herself. It was all in the confidence. Spike had it. Mina didn’t.

“Well, time for you to run along home,” Spike told Mina. “Slayer and I are heading out to patrol.”

“I would be happy to have something to do, if you would like me to come with you.”

“No,” Spike said, at the same time Buffy said, “Okay.”

Spike gave her a look that meant, _There goes your chance of getting laid tonight_ , and Buffy raised an eyebrow. _As if you would turn me down_.

Mina smiled. “Besides, I was hoping I could borrow Miss Summers’ couch again tonight. Although you have a lovely crypt — Spike — ” — she still sounded like she thought it was a ridiculous name — “ — I think I favor a house.”

“You and everyone else,” Buffy told her. “Of course you can have the couch.”

“You like my sodding crypt well enough when you’re screaming my n — ” Buffy stepped on her foot again. “Ow, Slayer.”

“Be _have_.”

Spike gave her one of those slow-rolling sex-on-legs grins that made her want to go find a bedroom. “Make me.”

“I’m going to _stake_ you.”

“Ooh, baby, do you promise?”

Buffy ground her heel in this time, and Spike winced. Then she waved down the waitress and handed over a crumpled pad of bills. “One sec,” Buffy said, and took the money back, counting it and then passing it over again. “Keep the change.”

When the waitress was gone, looking annoyed, Spike turned to her. “Are you checking to make sure I _tipped_?”

“You’re the one who keeps insisting you’re still the Big Bad.”

“Big Bads kill people, they don’t stiff the service workers.”

Buffy started laughing, and Spike bent in to claim her traditional forfeit. When they looked up, Mina was flushed and looking away.

“I suppose it’s just a little odd to me that it’s acceptable to do that in this day and age,” she said, when Spike raised her scarred eyebrow.

Smiling, Buffy stood up. “Well, I mean. It’s not, like, totally acceptable to everyone. But most people don’t bother Spike.” She led the way out of the restaurant. “Even though I’m the only one who can actually kick their ass.”

Spike put her arm around Buffy’s shoulders again, which made it harder to walk, but Buffy felt bad about shaking her off. “Taken one way, what she’s really saying there is that demons aren’t homophobes.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Demons are usually more focused on getting all murder-y than on who I make out with.”

“Oy, speaking of murder — rules are three.” Spike held up her hand to Mina as they walked. “First, you stay between us. Second, you do whatever we tell you to do. Third, if something nasty takes a swing at you, duck. I like my unlife and I don’t want you ruining it by biting the big one.”

Mina nodded, face grim, blue eyes serious. Buffy had virtually never seen Spike with this solemn and obedient an expression on her face. “Of course. As you say.”

Mina managed not to die on the patrol, although admittedly, no one in Sunnydale was less at risk from the Hellmouth than someone who was standing between the two of them. There were only a few vampires hanging around, and although Mina had squeaked with shock the first time Buffy had thrown one into a tomb and Spike had ripped its head off its shoulders, she had gotten over the crying out and praying thing by the third one and had instead resorted to pressing her lips tightly together and clenching her fists.

Still, she looked immensely relieved when Spike said, “Ten-thirty, Slayer. Time to go babysit the shimmer.” Buffy decided not to mention that they had been patrolling when they had _found_ the shimmer, and that it had involved a fair amount of heavy fighting. She thought Mina could probably use the moments of relief before that realization hit.

“Is it always like that?” she asked timidly while they picked their way across Sunnydale.

“Nah, ‘s usually worse,” Spike replied. “You got an easy night.”

Mina’s voice was soft and horrified. “Oh. Heavens.”

As they drew close to the graveyard wall, they made out two figures standing in the dim. Spike, who had the better night vision, narrowed her eyes, and then rolled them. “Oh, Slayer, you’re going to love this.”

“Hi, Buff,” said Xander as they drew closer, sounding guilty.

“ _That’s_ Buffy now?” said the _other_ Xander. “She looks so — ” Buffy glared. “ — uh — beautiful.”

Spike snorted, derisive. “Well, isn’t this a fucking triumph of humanity.”

“Oh, Xander,” Buffy sighed. “You touched the shimmer?”

“It was an accident.”

The other Xander, who looked much more like the teenager Buffy had first met, nodded hurriedly.

“You know, you should kiss Anya’s feet for getting with you when you looked like _that_ ,” Spike said, pointing at him.

Both of them said, “Hey!” and then the younger one added, “Wait, who’s Anya?”

Spike barked a laugh. “You have such a bloody storm coming. And then going.”

Xander’s hands were trembling. Buffy stepped on Spike’s foot for the fourth time that night. “Spike, shut up.”

“Spike?” said teenaged Xander. “Who names their kid _Spike_?”

“Her middle name is Clementine,” Buffy told him, and both Xanders burst out laughing.

Spike looked like she was choking on nothing. “ _Slayer_!”

Buffy turned back and fluttered her eyelashes. “That’s for making me late this morning.”

“You sodding _loved it_!”

“Someone should go get Willow,” Xander said, wisely breaking in. “And probably Tara.”

Little Xander raised his hand. “Who’s Tara?”

“Willow’s girlfriend.”

“Is there anyone here who _doesn’t_ have a girlfriend?”

“You,” Spike said.

Teenage Xander pointed at Buffy. “And Buffy.”

There was silence. Xander’s eyes widened. Spike started smirking. Buffy turned to her and punched her in the shoulder. “ _You_ , go get Willow and Tara!”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the one causing all the _problems_.”

“I’m not the one who poked the time portal!”

“ _Accidentally_ ,” Xander interjected.

“Go,” Buffy ordered her, putting on her Slayer Voice and pointing in the direction of the Magic Box. Spike looked at her for a couple of seconds and then, as she always did when Buffy pulled out the Voice, sighed.

“Wouldn’t object to coming back and finding two of you, Slayer,” she said, with a grin that would have melted steel. “Think I could have some fun with that.”

“Gross,” said one of the Xanders.

“Like your girl didn’t think the exact same thing.”

“You have a girl?” said younger Xander to older Xander.

“Have fun with that one.” Spike disappeared into the night.

“I really hate her, you know,” Xander said to Buffy, then turned to Mina. “Not you. Actually, maybe you. What are your feelings about biting into a juicy neck?”

Mina shuddered. The Xanders looked at each other.

“Yeah, she’s all right. Maybe you could date this one instead, Buff.”

Teenage Xander squawked. “ _That_ was Buffy’s girlfriend?”

Normal Xander shook his head. “How did you _miss_ that?”

Mina was bright red for what had to be the thousandth time that night. She fiddled with her glasses and didn’t meet any of their eyes.

“Hey,” said Xander. “Do you have anything else embarrassing to tell us about Spike? Er, about you? Keep in mind that when I ask that, I’m asking about basically anything you’re proud of, because Spike’s hobbies all involve mayhem or bloodshed or both and you seem like more of a crosswords girl.”

Mina hesitated, looking in the direction Spike had left in like she was wondering if she could hear them. Buffy realized, belatedly, that probably no one had warned her about vampire hearing, but even so, Spike was probably out of that range by now. “I play a little piano,” she said slowly. “And sketch. I’ve never had much talent for embroidery — mother despairs.” She brightened. “I’m quite good at cricket.”

“So what does a corset feel like?” Teenage Xander asked.

“If you care to try it, Mr. — Mr. Harris, I have one at the Summers residence that I am happy to lace you into.”

Buffy perked up. “Oh, can I try it?”

Xander rolled his eyes. “Yeah, go ahead, fulfill Spike’s wildest fantasies.”

Buffy shrugged, which made Mina blush again.

Teenage Xander grinned, looking young and goofy and making Buffy’s heart ache a little for how little Xander looked like that these days. “Just going out on a limb here based on her whole _thing_ , but I don’t think that’s Spike’s wildest fantasy by a _long_ shot.”

Xander sputtered, and pointed at the gate. “Go stand in the corner. _No_ mentioning Spike’s sex life!”

“You did it first!”

“Well, on the bright side, this doesn’t seem to be very problematic so far.” Buffy said, as teenage Xander flounced over to the wall, mumbling nonsense. “Unless it turns out little Xander’s memories are going to mess up big Xander’s life.”

“Well, I don’t remember time traveling as a freshman, so so far, so good.”

Buffy groaned. “I _so_ do not want to think about time travel paradoxes tonight.”

“It seems to me possible that any changes made to the world through time travel would have to be self-correcting by the time the future came about.” Mina was fiddling with her glasses again. “Because, you see, if the world remains static at the point in which you travel back in time — which in theory it would have to to maintain the change that would take place in the past — then whatever changes are produced would still have to lead eventually to the time travel event. So, for instance, Mr. Harris’ younger self being here cannot eliminate the elder Mr. Harris, or even move him very far, because in that case the elder Mr. Harris would never be able to touch the — shimmer and produce the change.”

Xander and Buffy both stared at her. After a moment, she cleared her throat and started polishing her glasses, so reminiscent of Giles that Buffy giggled. “Is Spike… _smart_?” Xander asked, after a moment.

Buffy punched him in the shoulder. “Yes.”

Mina was looking at Xander with an expression that was the much less menacing version of Spike’s death glare. “I went to Cambridge.” She paused. “Not that they would award me degree, but I assure you, Mr. Harris, I _am_ educated, despite being a woman.”

“Hey, hey.” Xander held up his hand. “This isn’t a _sexism_ thing. All my best friends are women. It’s more of a Spike-acts-like-king-moron thing.”

All right, that was fair. Spike did act like an idiot if you didn’t look too closely at her eyes. Buffy decided to let it slide, although she generally tried to keep Xander on a leash with regards to the Spike-insulting, and vice versa.

There was a hissing pop from behind them, and all three of them turned around.

“I’m not sure Spike is winning the prize for king moron tonight,” Buffy said.

Teenage Xander shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “It was an accident.”

A chubby, dark-haired kid stood next to him, looking bewildered.

When Tara and Willow got back with Spike, Dawn trailing behind them, Buffy, Mina, and the three Xanders were sitting on the ground, looking at the shimmer.

“Hey,” said Willow. “Is it just me or is it smaller?”

“Are you talking about the shimmer or Xander?” Buffy asked.

Willow peered at them, and then broke into a smile. “Aw! Little Xander. Wait. Little Xander. What are you doing here?”

“’m guessing Boy Genius here touched it again,” Spike drawled, getting out a cigarette. “And now we get to deal with his sorry arse in triplicate.”

“So, if it is what I think it is, I think if we, um, reverse the flow, that should let us put you all back,” Tara said, clutching a book to her chest. "But Willow’s right, it’s smaller than it was when I was here this afternoon."

Spike exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Was about two meters across last night.”

Buffy looked back at it. It was maybe half that size now. “That doesn’t seem good.”

Willow grimaced. “Um, no. Probably not. That probably means it’s closing.”

“So does anybody have an idea of how to ‘reverse the flow’ before that happens?” Spike asked.

No one spoke.

“Fan-bloody-tastic.”

Xander shrugged. “It’s okay, Mina said it would be fine.”

Mina, for her own part, did not look as reassured by her own words as Xander evidently had been. She was making a little face that Buffy had never seen Spike make before, mouth a moue of uncertainty, eyebrows drawn together.

Spike also did not look reassured. “What, some bunk about fixed points in time and self-correction?”

Xander turned back to Buffy. “Is Spike _smart_?” he asked again. Then he turned to Willow. “Did everyone know Spike was smart except me?”

Spike rolled her eyes, and took another drag on her cigarette before she answered. “She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. And _that_ theory can’t explain what happens if I punt the rugrat there into next week. D’you die too?”

“Mostly _you_ just get a big ol’ headache,” Xander retorted.

“You’re missing the point, braniac. Tell me how you get back to this fixed point in history if your past self’s kicked the bucket. Go on. I’m waiting.”

Mina cleared her throat. Her round glasses were perched on the end of her nose, slightly askew from her fidgeting. “Well, in that case, Mr. Harris would be unable to touch the shimmer as an adult and his child self would be unable to come here to die, which would mean that he would remain alive.”

Spike turned to the rest of them and held out her arms like a director ordering the bow at the end of a play. “Ta da.”

Xander frowned. “It does make less sense when you put it like that.”

“We’re not solving a philosophical paradox that’s been keeping debate alive for sodding decades with zero college degrees between us.” Spike had finished her cigarette with alarming speed and was reaching for another one. “We’re just putting everything back where it bloody came from and no one the wiser.”

“If we can figure out how to reverse the flow,” Buffy added.

“And _you_ , Bit, stay far away from that thing. We don’t need to add a bunch of disembodied energy to this menagerie.”

Dawn stuck her tongue out, as if she hadn’t been inching closer to get a better look at it.

“So what does it feel like when you go through it?” Tara asked.

Xander screwed up his face. “Kind of cold?”

“As though I were being pulled on,” Mina said softly. “I was walking down the street in London, and then there was a sort of hook beneath my breast. The world about me fulgurated and — ”

“Flashed,” Spike interrupted.

“ — and then I was tugged forwards and everything was dark.”

Spike rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because it was _night_.”

Tara ignored her. “Did it hurt?”

“It was like leaving the womb. A cold shock. There was no pain, per se, but it was extremely disorienting.”

Two of the Xanders grimaced identically. The youngest one said, “What’s a womb?”

Everyone pretended they had suddenly and entirely gone deaf.

“I think I need to do some more reading,” Tara murmured. “Xander, was it the same for you?”

“Oh, yeah. I was in the hall before biology and I kind of fell backwards. I don’t know. Now I’m here.”

Spike turned to Mina and gestured at teenage Xander. “D’you see how bloody fast that description _could_ have been?”

“Less use of the word womb, too,” Adult Xander said. “I’m a master of the language arts.”

Buffy pursed her lips. “Tara, why is it different now?”

Willow spoke up. “Well, what we were looking at was sort of like a — weak spot in time.”

“So that when Spike fell through it it sort of punched a hole for another Spike to walk through,” Tara added. “But — it seems more, um, involuntary than that.”

Seeing everyone was looking confused, Willow finished. “Ooh, like a pez dispenser in time. Like when Spike fell through, it forcibly displaced other Spike. As if a bunch of you were standing in a line and when you went through it you knocked her out with you.”

“But I didn’t go _through_!” Teen Xander insisted. “I just touched it!”

“Accidentally,” cut in adult Xander.

Teen Xander looked shifty. “Well, kind of.”

“Are you guys _sure_ that this is something different?” Buffy asked. “I mean, there’s not that much difference between walking forward and being pushed forward. Magically. Right?”

“Voluntariness is very important!” Willow told her. “It changes the whole character. We were talking about a _flow_ , but it’s more like a vacuum.”

Buffy could see that Spike was struggling to not say anything mean, which she decided to consider progress. “So what you’re saying is, we’re stuck with Triple Threat here and I’ve got double the laundry for a while more.”

“If we can keep it from closing,” Tara said.

Willow bit her lip. “Does anyone else _kind of_ want to touch it? And, I don’t know, tell their past self something hopeful? Like, ‘don’t worry, you don’t actually want a boyfriend as much as you think you do’?”

“’Don’t worry, you only die twice before the age of 21,’” Buffy chimed in, which earned her the usual guilty looks from Willow and Xander and a snort from Spike.

“The world doesn’t end when you turn 20,” Tara said, to break the silence.

Adult Xander turned to teenage Xander and put a hand on his shoulder. “You date Cordelia Chase for a while.”

Teenage Xander broke back into his goofy smile. “No kidding!”

“And then she dumps you because you’re such a ladykiller,” added Willow. At the skeptical look that earned her, she continued, “No, really!”

Dawn jumped in. “What about you, Spike?”

Silence fell again. Then Spike turned to Mina, and said, “You die before you have to get married.”

No one seemed certain how to react to that until Mina replied, “Well, that _is_ a relief.”

“That was almost as bad as Buffy’s,” teen Xander whispered, not quietly enough for everyone not to hear him. “What? It was!”

“No more touching the shimmer,” said Buffy. “No touchy. No more past selves. And Xander, the only thing you’re babysitting for the next day is yourself. Willow, Tara, hit the books full-time and see what’s up with the pez dispenser of time before it closes for business. Spike and I will take turns babysitting. Did anything try to get near it today?”

Spike shrugged a shoulder. “Dusted a few vamps last night after you went back. Nobody who looked like they knew what was here.”

Willow nodded. “A couple of old ladies came by this morning, but they were here to visit.”

“Hey, look on the bright side.” Xander gestured around at the graveyard, empty except for the six — now nine — of them. “This is one of those good old Hellmouth weirdness specials, not an apocalypse in waiting conjured up by some evil demon. That’s good to know.”

Buffy sighed. “Or the evil demon just hasn’t found it yet.”

“Oh,” said Xander. “Right.”

“Or it could be just a weirdness special,” Dawn reminded them. “We have no evidence that it’s anything else, so we don’t _have_ to be pessimistic. So far this is kind of fun.”

Buffy turned to her and put her hands on her hips. “Dawn, you should _not_ still be awake, it’s past midnight and you have school tomorrow. Go take Mina home.”

“You, too. I’ve got night shift, love,” Spike told her, and bent to kiss her. Two of the Xanders made gagging noises, and Spike tightened one arm around her, held up two fingers of her other hand in his direction, and deepened the kiss.

“Ugh, guys, get a room,” Dawn finally said, sounding nothing short of delighted. Spike released her with another peck to her lips and then took advantage of the fact that almost everyone was averting their eyes to grab her ass. Mina, who had apparently been frozen staring at them, looked quickly away, face so red it was practically glowing.

“See you at sunup, kitten,” Spike murmured in her ear before she pointed a finger at Mina. “And _you_ , don’t get bloody fresh.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my butch feelings continue to get in the way of my desire to write lesbian threesome porn
> 
> is anyone reading this? idk. next chapter i will solve the mystery and anya will appear. i think it's kind of funny. the chapter after that is straight up porn.
> 
> if anyone wants more butch spike, please leave ideas in the comments; i'm already sort of doodling out a thing about drusilla and another one about the world's worst sexual roleplay. please hit me up, gals, i have mad muse for butch spike rn

On the way home, Mina was quiet, looking around at the trees they were passing and the people who were no longer looking at them funny now that she wasn’t wearing a Victorian dress. Dawn was telling her about all the buildings they passed. Buffy fell behind the two of them to walk with Willow and Tara, who were hand in hand.

“I didn’t want to say this while Xander was there, but I think we might want to bring Anya in on this one,” she said. “This is kind of right up her alley.”

Willow nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Portals and alternate dimension type stuff. Totally her thing.”

“Plus, I’m kind of stumped,” Tara said quietly. “I mean, I thought I had it, but it sounds different. What we found should sort of — you know, feel like getting punched in the face for both of them. But none of them mentioned that. And I feel like they probably would have.”

Willow pursed her lips. “Yeah... I don’t see Xander not complaining about that.”

“I don’t see _Spike_ not complaining about that.” Buffy replied. “She prefers deserving it when she gets punched, allegedly.”

Tara shrugged. “Since she was in the middle of a fight when it happened, I didn’t really think she’d be able to tell.”

“Oh, she was on the thing’s back.” Buffy twiddled her stake between her fingers, switching her bag to the other shoulder. “It couldn’t punch her.”

“So she, um, fell backward through it?” Willow asked.

“No, forward. Like, she was on its back, and it fell through and she fell through with it. Like she was riding it. Does that matter?”

Willow shrugged. “Maybe. We don’t really know what matters.”

They walked in silence for a while before Tara spoke again. “I know we don’t talk about it, but I miss Giles.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said shortly. “Don’t think we need him for this, though.”

The silence took back over. “I really do kind of want to touch it,” Willow said, finally. “Just, you know, I think it would be interesting. Time travel! I mean, it’s like… a sci-fi-magic miracle. Mostly magic, I guess.”

Buffy gave her a look. “All magic. So _no_ touchy.”

“I know, I know. But don’t tell me you didn’t kind of think about it.”

She tossed up her hands. “Okay, I kind of thought about it. A little. At the beginning. But Spike hates it so much that I’ve kind of reconsidered.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? Mina seems totally nice. Which, honestly, is not what I would have expected. Also, I wasn’t expecting, like, the dress and the hair and the whole thing. I mean, she’s so polite. And, um, feminine. And Spike is so — not.”

“Well,” Tara said. “I don’t know. I think ­— haven’t you noticed that Spike is kind of different? For a vampire, I mean.”

“Been there, noticed it, dating it semi-seriously,” Buffy replied.

Willow giggled. “That kiss did _not_ look _semi_ -serious.”

Quickly making sure that Dawn and Mina were far enough ahead of them that Dawn wouldn’t overhear anything that Buffy would never live down, she lowered her voice and told them, “And that was her being _restrained_.”

“Oh,” said Tara.

“ _Oh_ ,” said Willow. “That’s a lot. Wait, how could it get _less_ restrained than that?” Buffy cleared her throat. Willow shook her head. “Never mind! Never mind. Vampires, jeez.”

“Anyway, I think she’s, um, less than comfortable with us seeing her all… human.” Buffy shrugged. “You know, Xander’s all pal-ing around with himself, but I genuinely think Spike is wigged. She seems really prickly about it. I kind of feel bad, actually. I mean, she seems really, really — bothered.”

“Well, it is probably spookier to see the you of like, a hundred years ago than the you of five years ago.”

“I think she’s scared,” said Tara, after a few beats of silence.

“I’m not sure Spike is capable of feeling the emotion of fear,” Buffy joked, but knew when Willow wrinkled her nose that it had kind of fallen flat. “Of course I know she is. I’m just. I don’t know, what’s there to be scared of? It’s not like Mina is exactly trying to ruin her life.”

“The same thing she’s always scared of.” Tara was looking at the sky instead of at Buffy. “You.”

“ _Me_?”

Tara nodded. “I’m — well, you know. On my birthday — you know, _the_ birthday — ” She gestured vaguely in the air. “When my family — well. I was worried Will was going to, you know, find out and leave me. The whole demon thing. You know, that suddenly she wouldn’t look at me the same way. There wasn’t anything that I was scared of more than that.”

“Aw, baby,” said Willow. “I would never.”

Tara smiled at her. Buffy, suddenly, did not feel much like smiling.

“I already _know_ Spike is a demon.”

“You’ve only ever known Spike _as_ a demon.” Tara pointed out. “Now there are other options out there.”

Buffy blinked. That made, oddly enough, a lot of sense. She fell back into silence until they had gotten back to the house.

The graveyard was still and barely dark when Buffy walked back up to the gates in the morning, Mina in tow. She had called out of work — babysitting possible apocalypses took precedence over flipping burgers — and was dressed in practical slaying clothes; jeans and a t-shirt with a leather jacket over it. Mina had been given her pick of Dawn’s clothes after being shown how to use the shower, and had ended up in Spike’s jeans from the day before and a pink halter top, since they had discovered her shoulders were a little too broad for anything with sleeves. The choice had surprised Buffy — Dawn owned black tank tops, and Spike would have picked one of those in a heartbeat. _This_ was, virtually, the girliest thing that Dawn owned without sleeves. _So_ not a Spike choice.

Spike’s mouth bent up when she saw Buffy, but her lip curled as soon as her eyes glanced behind her and found Mina. “What the hell are you wearing? Is that Niblet’s?”

Mina, who had been uncomfortable with the entire concept of baring her arms, and had chosen to let Buffy lend her a shawl, blinked, and then looked deeply, pervasively uncomfortable. “Dawn’s stuff fits you,” Buffy said, stepping in to save her. “The you without fifty extra pounds of muscle, I mean. I think it looks cute.”

Something dark flitted over Spike’s face, and she straightened her shoulders, her duster twitching with the motion. “Why did you even bring her?”

“I’m going to get bored without company. And so would she if I left her at the house. It’s not like sitting around your place while you sleep is a ton of fun.”

Spike’s angular jaw worked, the muscle twitching in a way that Buffy thought was probably repressed rage. The last time she had seen it do that, she had been trying to tell Spike that she wasn’t going to give them a chance. Her voice was raspier than usual when she finally spoke. “Well, I’m gonna run home before I get dusted. See you at sunset.”

She didn’t kiss Buffy before she left, sweeping across the grass without looking back.

Mina cleared her throat. “Miss Summers, I believe you were intentionally antagonizing her.”

“Getting Spike angry is the only way to get her to talk to me. She does the same thing.”

The blue eyes were looking into her the same way that Spike’s always did. So, the weird mind-reading was a remnant of human Spike, Buffy guessed. Good to know. “That does not seem like an especially favorable arrangement.”

“I thought we could talk while you were here,” Buffy told her. “I mean, since all we have to do is watch that.”

The shimmer had shrunk still since last night, but only so much as to be barely noticeable. It was probably only two and a half feet across now. Not much to watch. And, if the night shift had been as empty as the shifts yesterday — which, Buffy realized, she’d forgotten to ask — there was probably nothing coming after it. Not much to watch, but all day to watch it. Another good reason to have Mina there was that at least someone could run out and get lunch.

“I’m happy to help you pass the time, of course, Miss Summers. It is quite infrequently that I have any opportunity to converse with other women.”

“Why’s that?”

Mina looked briefly sad. Her hair, which was still drying from the shower, was beginning to shine in the light. Spike’s was too short and too fake blonde to do that, and Buffy reached out to finger one of her curls, withdrawing her hand when Mina flinched.

“I suppose I have never been entirely comfortable around other women,” she said, slowly. “I always feel they see too much. Most of my friends are men, although I find them tiresome occasionally.”

Spike’s friends were still mostly men, Buffy realized. With the exception of the Scoobies, who were maybe fifty percent Spike’s friends at best. She got along well with Anya — or had until the two of them had taken to avoiding each other after The Incident — and a couple of other she-demons, but for the most part, when Buffy saw her in the wild, lounging around enjoying Sunnydale’s demonic nightlife, she was with men. “They can be tiresome,” she agreed. “No offense to Xander.”

“Mr. Harris seems to be, in large part, a very admirable man, as men go,” Mina said diplomatically. “I can tell he is very loyal to you, and to your friends. Although I may not have appreciated his comments of last night, I am certain he meant well.”

Buffy let one side of her mouth quirk up. “I think that’s more nice things than Spike has ever said about Xander. And they were roommates for a while.”

“Is that what led to the — forgive me, I couldn’t help but notice the enmity between them.”

“Spike slept with his ex-fiancé,” Buffy told her, trying to sound casual about it because she didn’t want to answer questions about it. “On camera. It was very cinematic. Anyway, it hasn’t been long enough for him to be over that. I don’t know if it will ever be.”

“On camera?”

“Oh. Yeah, like, there was a video recording of — wait, you don’t know what video is either. Like, a moving picture. Like he wasn’t there, but he still had to see it.”

Mina’s face lit up with the same wondering look that she had worn when Buffy had shown her how to use chopsticks, which was probably the only positive reaction Buffy had ever gotten to telling anyone Spike had gotten all jiggy with Anya. “Do you know how that is done? I would be very interested to hear about the process.”

“I’m not that kind of smart,” Buffy told her. “Ask Willow, maybe. Or… Spike actually might know.”

“I doubt she would be particularly forthcoming with me.”

Buffy winced. “Yeah, probably not.”

“It seems to me that she isn’t always forthcoming with you, Miss Summers, either — I beg your pardon for the observation.”

Buffy sincerely doubted that Mina had secrets that Spike should have been forthcoming with, which meant this could only be using Spike’s formidable powers of perception against her, based on Mina’s two-day stay with them. Which was perfect, and exactly what Buffy had wanted. “What does that mean?”

“Well, she seems very reluctant to allow the two of us to talk.”

“Oh, yeah. Super jealous.”

“Not that I do not — ” Mina paused for a long time, slowly turning a fantastic shade of red. The blush was kind of cute. It was a shame Spike didn’t do that anymore. “ — find you very attractive, Miss Summers, of course you are very attractive, but it seems to me that there is little reason to be jealous.”

The compliment sounded like it had been pulled out of her with a pliers, which was a little strange, given how frequently and in what detail Spike liked to tell her about how beautiful she was. “Why no reason to be jealous? I mean, you _are_ her, and I _am_ attracted to her.”

Although, now that she thought about it, she _wasn’t_ really attracted to Mina, as much as that sentence implied it. She was pretty, in a sort of sharp, timid way, but there was nothing in her that made Buffy want to climb her like a tree. If it was possible, Mina’s face went an even more violent shade when the suggestion hit her. “Ah,” she said weakly. “Well. I am — I am ill-equipped to handle — that is to say, I have no true romantic experience. I would hardly be able to, um, seduce you, if it were my wont to do so. Which, of course, it is not — ”

Buffy frowned at her. “Hey, why _of course_?”

Mina covered her face with her hands. “Oh, goodness. I must seem so rude.”

“The first time Spike met me she told me she was going to kill me,” Buffy said, restraining a smile with some difficulty. “And then she tried to kill me. So. Don’t worry, we’re _way_ past rude.”

Mina looked flatly horrified, her face coming up out of her hands with her eyes wide with dismay. “Surely not!”

“Oh, yeah. You vampire, me Slayer,” she said, waving it off. “The whole thing.”

Her reassurance was evidently not very reassuring. Mina remained pale and upset. “I cannot believe you would choose to — to become involved with me — with her! — after such a — oh, that is dreadful. Miss Summers, I apologize.”

“Seriously, it’s fine. I kicked her ass _way_ more than she kicked mine. Also, my mom hit her with an axe for the whole trying to kill me thing, so we mostly call it even. Why are you apologizing, anyway?”

“Surely I have some responsibility for my future actions.”

“She’s not… really you, anymore,” Buffy said. “I mean, she is in some ways. Actually, I’m not even sure. Spike changed my mind about the idea that vampires were just demons walking around in human bodies, but after meeting you, I don’t know if I actually see you two as the same person.”

“Which would mean you have fallen in love with the demon,” Mina concluded, and crossed herself again.

Well, here they were. Back at the very same objection everyone had to Spike. Buffy had been hoping that that wouldn’t come up. She had been hoping that love wouldn’t come up either, but no such luck. “Um. I wouldn’t say the l-word, I guess.”

The expression on Mina’s face would have crushed the hardest heart on earth. Buffy did not have that heart, especially not for those eyes. She looked like Buffy had just personally taken her puppy out back and shot it. Were those tears welling up? “I see,” she whispered, looking away. Her shoulders had collapsed in on themselves.

“Not that — ” Buffy felt like the worst person on earth, which was impressive, given that she was pretty sure everyone she knew thought Spike was the worst person on earth. “I mean, I haven’t said it to her.”

The eyes came up. There was a certain something in them that was missing in Spike’s, and a certain something that was missing that Spike had. A life that Spike had had, perhaps, that Mina hadn't. A softness that Mina had, perhaps, that Spike had left behind long ago. “Do you want to?”

This conversation had taken a horrible turn, Buffy decided. “Oh, god. That’s the million-dollar question.”

“If you have to question it, the answer is no,” said Mina, voice low. “Forgive me, I should not take this personally. I asked the same question of her myself.”

“What question?”

“Why you had chosen her.”

Buffy’s eyebrows drew together. “What did she say?”

Mina, awkwardly, held up two fingers and then put her tongue between them, and then went almost purple with embarrassment. Buffy couldn’t help it — she laughed so hard at that she could barely breathe. She could imagine Spike making that gesture exactly. Probably coupling it with something like, _Because I slay pussy, love_ , and wagging her tongue. Come to think of it, she was pretty sure that when they had been sleeping together before her friends had known anything about it, Spike had made that gesture at her across the Magic Box and she had nearly dragged her into the training room.

“Oh my god, Mina, I’m sorry,” she said, almost hiccuping with mirth as Mina stared at her incredulously. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at Spike. It’s just — oh, god. I can just see her doing that. She is _so_ — ugh. What a pig.”

That made Mina’s mouth flatten. “Miss Summers. Are vampires able to love?”

With effort, Buffy stopped laughing. “ _Vampires_ , I don’t know. Spike, yeah.”

Mina squared her shoulders in a way that Spike typically did before she went into a battle that she didn't think she could win. She took a deep breath, and spoke: “She loves you. I can see why — even if she had not explained it to me. As a child I always looked up to the Amazons of legend; it seems I somehow managed to find such a one in you. You are — kind, and brave, and full of life. And — ” she paused. “Oh, I’ve upset you.”

Buffy realized that she was tearing up too. “No, no. You’re just being really nice.”

“Am I usually not?”

The _I_ was plainly not meant to apply to the girl sitting in front of Buffy, solemn and distressed. “No, she is. She’s a huge bitch most of the time, but she’s always very — I know she loves me. She tells me all the time.”

“But you don’t love her in return.”

“I — ” Buffy didn’t want to say no. But she also didn’t want to say yes.

“Please understand that I am not blaming you, Miss Summers. I seem to have grown into — a very callous woman. Cold, violent. And I would not expect you to see much in someone like me, in the first place. Certainly not in someone like her.”

“Spike isn’t cold,” Buffy said immediately. “I mean, physically, yes. But not how you mean it.”

Mina looked skeptical. “Forgive me.”

“She’s — I know she hasn’t been coming over very well while you’ve been here, but I swear, you do turn into an okay person. You go through being a _really_ bad person in the middle, but — Spike cares. A lot. She’s loving, and protective, and she keeps her promises. She brings flowers to my mom’s grave and hangs out with my sister and — well. She’s trying. I can tell how hard she’s trying. I guess that’s most important to me.”

The clear blue eyes were fixed on her own. For a moment, Buffy could swear she saw Spike in them, but no, they were too mild. It was the fleeting look of understanding that had passed through them that had fooled her.

“She might benefit by hearing that,” said Mina softly. “I believe I have.”

“You said I was full of life,” Buffy told her impulsively. “I wasn’t, for a long time. She helped me find that again.”

Mina smiled at her. It was a smile she had never seen on Spike’s face before, all bleeding heart, and she wasn’t sure what to call it.

Sometime after lunch, when they had exhausted the number of things Buffy was able to explain about the technology of the twenty-first century, and the number of things that Buffy cared to have explained to her about the nineteenth, Mina lay back on the grass. Buffy had never really gotten to see her in the sunlight, with the exception of the very, very short fight over the Gem of Amara. And she hadn’t really been focused on anything but how much she wanted to kick her ass, then.

Spike was beautiful, although maybe not in the most traditional sense of the word. Sharp. Like she had been carved out of rock. It was a face that belonged to a statue, even in life. It definitely did not belong to a woman with curly brown hair flowing over her shoulders and little round glasses perched on her nose.

The features were just a little too strong to be as soft as Mina always tried to make them when she was speaking, but when she was silent and still she mostly just looked like Spike. A shifted version, maybe. But if you took away the hair and the clothes, and left her quiet, they would look quite alike, in the face at least.

“You have freckles,” Buffy realized, as Mina said, “I think there’s something I can do for you.”

Both of them blinked, and then said, “Yes?” at the same time.

Mina laughed. “Ah. Well, yes, Miss Summers. I suppose I haven’t had the ability to develop them in a century.”

“What were you saying?”

“I’d like to tell you about myself.”

Buffy furrowed her brow. “Not to discourage you, but _why_?”

“Because I don’t foresee my counterpart doing so, and I think you had better ought to know.”

This felt weirdly like cheating. Or, not like cheating, but like it was something she would have to lie to Spike about later. Buffy frowned, and shifted on the grass. “I don’t think Spike would really like that.”

Mina sat up. “I have no doubt that you are correct. That’s why I’m suggesting it.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. “ — are you flirting with me again?”

For a moment, Mina looked as if she was about to tearfully deny it as usual and apologize for giving off that impression. But then, she smiled. It was a very _Spike_ smile, almost eerily like her — more of a wicked grin than anything. “Most definitely, Miss Summers.”

Well, there it was. Buffy could feel her ears going pink. Mina laughed, a laugh like Spike’s, and just as it had come, it left when she sobered and looked back at Buffy through her lashes, back to being all soft eyes and reserved mouth.

“I apologize,” she said, “But I have always wanted to say something like that to a girl.”

“All right, you win,” Buffy told her, still rattled by the way her heart was beating. “Tell me things about you.”

“The first girl I ever loved worked at the flower shop down the street from my house,” Mina said without preamble. “I was eight. She — I don’t know, I never spoke to her. My mother would buy flowers on occasion and she would hand me a daisy and I thought about Iphis and how I would become a man for her, if I could. Of course, I never did. It broke my heart when I was twelve and she married a baker. My mother says I was despondent for weeks.”

“Your mother knew?” For a moment, Buffy wished, badly, that she could tell her own mother. She had liked Spike, she remembered. More than once she had said something that had implied Spike had come over to talk about art or TV with her when Buffy wasn’t there — which at the time had made her furious, but now it just ached.

“No, not why. But that I was sad, yes. I never told her why. I imagine I never will. It would break her heart — I don’t believe she would understand in the slightest.”

“Spike says you visit her even after you turn,” Buffy told her. “No hurtage or anything. Just visits. She must mean a lot to you.”

“Yes. I love her very much. It would kill me to disappoint her — she already despairs that I haven’t married at the age of thirty. I am her only child. There won’t be any grandchildren.”

That was sad, and final, and also true. “Kids are overrated,” she tried. From one person who’d never have them to another.

“I’ve never been very good with them,” Mina said. Which was odd, because Spike very much _was_. Which meant it had to be a skill she’d picked up with Drusilla, which meant — ugh. Buffy didn’t want to think about it. “They terrify me, to be perfectly honest. That’s half the reason I was so pleased that I’ll die before I’m married.”

“The other half being — ”

“That I would much rather die than take a man to bed.” Mina blushed again, apparently unused to talking so plainly. Buffy decided not to mention that, apparently, Spike had foregone that rule at Drusilla’s bidding.

“No threesomes. Gotcha.”

Mina blinked, then the blush deepened. “Oh — a — I see.” She took off her glasses and fiddled with them for a moment, looking, again, quite like Giles. “Um, well. I write poetry — there it is. She told me not to tell you that specifically, so I have crossed the line quite definitely.”

Buffy’s first instinct was to giggle. Her second was to wonder why Spike didn’t want her to know, other than the fact that poetry very much did not fit with her whole Big Bad aesthetic. An aesthetic, Buffy had to note, she was perfectly happy to take off when she had Buffy in bed. “Do you remember any of it?”

“Well, yes, but I think I’d better not cross _that_ line. It’s not very good, you see. And most of it is about other girls.”

“Oh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You’re right. Don’t want to hear it.”

Mina told her about school (she had loved it) and her friends (she had few) and how to play cricket (Buffy didn’t remember any of that explanation, but Mina had seemed so genuinely pleased to tell her that she hadn’t cut her off). She had talked at length about her mother (a stern, rotund woman, whose husband and Mina’s father had died of consumption and who was “terribly fond of caramels”) and her aunts (one of whom had slipped her a pamphlet of feminist literature and the other of whom had never much liked her). She was every bit as good a storyteller as Spike was, even with her softer voice and more opaque vocabulary, and Buffy found herself getting sucked in to the world that had been in the nineteenth century, and the person that Spike had been there.

Her earlier impression that Mina and Spike were so different that it was possible a demon really had taken over the body was erased in fairly short order.

Mina’s stories were sweet, mostly. They painted a picture of a girl who had grown into a woman feeling awkward and strange, and who had never had that impression corrected. She cast herself — truthfully, Buffy thought, because she told stories that were less favorable in addition to the sweet ones — as a sort of quiet, lonely person, who reached out for connections even when she had always been thoroughly rejected.

And, well. Spike wasn’t quiet or lonely anymore, but otherwise, she was the person that Mina was talking about. Persistent, for one. But Mina also described a girl who was passionate about the things she loved — passionate about love, in particular — and honest, and thoughtful, and who contained such a well of feeling that even death hadn’t extinguished it.

The sun had begun to set again and Mina was telling her about paying a boy to switch clothes with her for a day when she had been fifteen, when Spike herself returned. She was looking a little toasty — holding her duster over her head to block the last fading rays of sun over the horizon — and sleepless, with dark circles under her eyes and an annoyed tic in her cheek.

“ — no one knew — not even my mother’s best friend, Mrs. Ratliff. I walked right past her on the street, and she didn’t recognize me, not with my hair tucked up under the cap and in trousers. I had never felt so — ”

“Hate to break up the little party,” Spike interrupted, a sneer already lined up on her face. “Here for shift switch. Witches haven’t fixed it yet?”

Mina, who hadn’t had the vampire tinglies to warn her that Spike was sneaking up behind her, squeaked and went quiet. Buffy shrugged. “My guess is that Anya won’t come out here until after the shop closes, since it’s not exactly an apocalypse situation. They’re asking for her help.”

“Think I suggested that at the beginning. Thing’s not doing so hot, is it?”

The shimmer was about a foot across now. “No,” Buffy answered. “No one tried to sneak up on it, though, so that’s a bonus.”

“Sure you would have noticed with how you two were staring into each other’s eyes and all?” She flicked the top of Mina’s head, where her hair was piled up into a loose bun. “And _you_ , quit blushing, I can sodding smell that and it’s making me hungry.”

“Nope, not sure,” Buffy said unrepentantly. “Who knows with all these eyes we were making?”

Spike’s face went dark. Buffy considered regretting her actions, but actually, there was a traitorous part of her that thought that look was very much among the attractive. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but making Spike mad had been kind of the point.

The vampire's voice came out as a growl. “Bloody well hope something tries it. I’d _really_ like to kill something.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finally i get to express all my butch feelings. the me who was still trying to be feminine feels like an alien to me now that i'm older and not trying anymore. also a little dysphoria in this chapter even tho spike deffo does not call it that.
> 
> anyway, can you tell i half-assed the plot of story so i could get to the #feelings?
> 
> next chapter is straight up porn, congrats to everyone on finishing the scooby part of this

The witches showed up around seven, and Anya and Spike said a surprisingly normal hello before Anya stepped up to the portal and squinted at it, her blonde ponytail bobbing. “Oh,” she said, almost immediately, in her blunt, matter-of-fact tone. “Well, why didn’t you call me last night?”

“Uh — ” Willow started.

“Oh, I see. Xander was here and you thought he would be uncomfortable.”

“Only about a third of him,” Spike piped up.

Willow cut her off before she could say anything else, although Buffy, from her practice reading Spike, knew that she was already done talking. “The other two haven’t met you.”

“He’s coming back here tonight, though,” Tara warned her. “To, um, see if we fixed it.”

“Well, it’s not broken. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

“And what is it supposed to do?” Mina asked. Anya looked over at her, and then tilted her head to the side, studying her face. Buffy imagined that she had probably seemed much more human a thousand years ago, but her mannerisms were now about 95 percent demon, and probably always would be. The head tilt was something Spike did, too. Like an animal assessing prey.

Anya made a little humming noise. “You do look very different. But I think Buffy is probably still finding you both very attractive. I did, when — ” she cut herself off. “ — _it’s supposed_ to close. Which is what it’s doing. It’ll be gone by midnight.”

“Well, can you make it stop that?”

“No,” Anya said. “It’s a bubble in time. It’s not supposed to be here. It happens when someone comes through, and then it closes.”

“Well, more people than one have come through,” Buffy pointed out.

“No, I mean, someone came through without it and left it here. Laplace’s Demon.”

Spike made a thoughtful noise. “I thought that was just a theory.”

“It’s a theory named after a man who met a time-traveling demon,” Anya told them all, as if they were very stupid. “His name is actually Rabazion. He’s not bad when you get to know him, but sometimes these bubbles he leaves make a mess. It’s good that you watched it. Although you could have stopped sending things through it.”

“ _I_ did,” Spike muttered.

“Anyway, how do we send them back?” Buffy asked.

Anya shrugged. “Well, they just walk through. It's like a door. The second time you go through the bubble, your memories of what you’ve done since the last time you went through it will vanish, so it’s sort of just like blinking in the past. You lose a couple of seconds. Nothing serious.”

Willow frowned. “But the little Xander who made the littler Xander touched it and that didn’t send him back.”

“That’s because you’ve got to walk through _together_.” Anya rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Spike won’t lose her memories. She didn’t actually go _through_ , she just triggered it. She just has to trigger it again.”

“Great. Off we go, then,” Spike said to Mina.

Anya held up a hand. “She should probably be in whatever clothes she came in. Unless you think suddenly changing clothes in the middle of the street to _that_ top — which I like, by the way — won’t make everyone in the 1880s think you’re a witch.”

“Oh,” said Buffy. “I’ll go make a call to Dawn and tell her to bring it over. And to get Xander. Xanders.”

“Do I want to see him as an ugly child or do I want to not be here when he arrives?” Anya asked, seemingly to no one. “I suppose I’ll stay. Just in case you mess things up. In the meantime,” she reached her hand out to Mina. “Hello. I’m Anya. I had sex with the other you and now Xander is mad at us, even though it’s really his fault since he — ”

“Um,” said Willow.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” replied Mina, with an amount of tact that Buffy was fairly certain Spike had never shown anyone in her entire unlife, and took her hand. “Women in this time are very forthright.”

Anya smiled and retrieved her hand. “I’m a demon, actually. And I’m a thousand years old.”

“Well, in that case _you’re_ very forthright. I’ve always thought we had ought to be more forceful if we ever want men to listen to us.”

“I like her,” said Anya to Buffy. “Have you had sex with both of them yet?”

“No,” Buffy, Spike, and Mina said simultaneously, although in three _very_ different tones.

“Do you want to? Those woods will probably keep us from seeing you. You might never get the opportunity again. I should know.”

“No,” said Spike, alone. Then she looked at the other two of them. “Sodding hell. Of course you’re not going to back me up on this one. Fine, go shag each other rotten in the woods, won’t you? Like she says, you’ll never get another bloody opportunity! I’ll go get Dawn myself, don’t wait up.”

“That was very dramatic,” Anya told them, after Spike had stomped off. “I assume since it’s Spike that the objection isn’t ethical.”

When Spike turned back up, her foul mood hadn’t abated at all, and Xander was in a matching state, which meant that she’d probably said something horrible to him on the way over. Dawn alone seemed to be happy, holding a bundle of purple cloth in her arms and bounding over to Mina to hug her as soon as she saw her.

“Hello, Xander,” said Anya, clearly putting as much frost into her voice as she could muster. It turned out to not be very much. She had been better at frost right after it had happened. “Xanders.”

“Hi, Ahn,” the adult Xander replied, evidently resigned to his fate.

“ _That’s_ Anya?” said teenage Xander. “Are you _insane_? Look at us. We’re never getting any better than that.”

Adult Xander clapped a hand over his mouth, but Anya beamed at him. “I forgot how cute teenage Xander is!” she said. When everyone looked over at her, she shrugged. “He hasn’t _done_ it yet.” She turned to the child Xander. “I was hoping you would be ugly. The photos indicated you would be. But in person you’re sort of cute.”

“Well, watching this is just so much bloody fun, so I’m going first,” said Spike. “Get dressed, you.”

Mina retreated into the woods, and returned wrapped in her dress again. Now that she was more familiar with the way she moved her body, Buffy could see that she was stiff and uncomfortable. “Miss Summers, if you could?” she asked, turning around, and Dawn dashed in before Buffy could, or before Spike had time to stop her.

“I tried it on at home,” Dawn said as she did up the laces of the corset. “But I couldn’t get it done up by myself.”

“ _She_ can,” Spike muttered, and Buffy blinked. So that _was_ Victorian Era flirting.

“Very well,” Mina said, and nodded, turning back to them. “Miss Summers — that is, Buffy — it was my honor to make your acquaintance. I hope I have been able to leave you with something. ”

Spike looked like she was about to have an aneurysm.

“Miss Summers — Dawn — I have enjoyed meeting you, and appreciated your assistance with my presentation. The rest of you,” Mina continued. “Thank you for your help, and your company. You have made a very jarring few days seem nearly normal.”

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Spike broke in. “Come on. You. Me. Shimmer.”

“Wait a second,” said Buffy, and then stepped forward to wrap her arms around Mina for a moment, amused to find that the dress was lavender-scented. “Bye, Mina.” When she stepped back, Spike’s face was thunderous, but she held out her arm to Mina stiffly, like a gentleman.

Mina threaded her hand through Spike’s elbow, and the two of them walked forwards towards the shimmer.

What happened next, again, happened very fast. There was a great hissing noise, and a pop, and then all of a sudden there were four people standing there. There was silence for a moment, and then Spike swore. “God damn it — _Anyanka_ , what the bloody buggering fuck.”

Buffy squinted. There was Spike, Mina — and then what looked like a teenage boy and a perfect copy of her Spike, except for the fact that she was wearing a sleeveless, tattered shirt and what looked like eyeliner. Her vampire tinglies were going crazy. She put Dawn behind her, because any Spike who was a vampire but younger than her Spike was still capital B Bad.

Anya looked at them for a moment. “Well, you went in the wrong way.”

“What is the sodding _right way_?”

“ _Slayer_ ,” purred the slightly more punk-y Spike, evidently not much concerned by the change in scenery.

“Oy, settle,” said her Spike, and cuffed her on the back of the head. “Slayer’s mine.”

Eyeliner Spike turned around and did a double-take. “What the hell?”

“Excuse me — ?” said the teenager. “I’m not certain — ”

“Pipe down,” Spike growled. “We’re about to get rid of you.”

Eyeliner Spike looked around, saw Mina, and twitched like she’d been electrocuted. “Will someone explain to me what the sodding hell is going on?”

“Maybe once somebody bloody well explains it to me!”

“You have to go in the opposite of the way you came out, obviously,” Anya told them, completely unfazed. “I _told_ you, it’s like a door.”

“So Spike is king moron tonight, right?” asked Xander.

Eyeliner Spike tipped her head at him in an unsettling, predatory way. She smiled, and Buffy was alarmed to find that she found it _really_ attractive. Then she shifted into game face, which was less attractive, but. Unfortunately, not _that_ much less attractive.

As she started to stalk forward, Buffy’s Spike grabbed her by the back of the shirt and hauled her back. “I will dust you _myself_ if you lay a finger on anybody. Or toss you to the Slayer.”

“Already bagged me one,” Eyeliner Spike said, voice still pitched at that purr that Spike generally only brought out in the bedroom. “Happy to notch another.”

“Told you she’s mine.”

Eyeliner Spike turned back to her, and looked peevish. “What is wrong with you, mate? Gone soft in your old age?”

Willow cocked her head. “How can she tell Spike is older?”

“Because I’m not a bleeding idiot.”

Buffy sighed. “Maybe we should get rid of this one first.”

The rest of the Scoobies nodded vigorously. “Although she is very attractive,” said Anya.

Xander looked a little pinched as Eyeliner Spike looked Anya over in a way that was plainly lascivious and winked. “Don’t mind if I do, love,” she said.

“All right, that’s it,” Spike interrupted. “You, with me.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Easy way or hard way.”

Buffy winced. She knew exactly how _this_ was going to end.

Eyeliner Spike grinned, and Buffy realized that her lip was pierced, glinting with silver. That was unfortunately kind of hot too. God, why was evil Spike so much more attractive than human Spike? “Always liked a bit of a challenge.”

Spike shrugged her jacket off and tossed it in Buffy’s direction. “All right, sweetheart. Come get it.”

“You must be very aroused right now,” Anya said to Buffy as the two of them rolled around snarling.

Buffy didn’t answer, and Dawn started giggling.

It didn’t take as long as Buffy might have expected it to. Spike’s fighting style had changed, she realized, through association with her. She’d incorporated a number of Buffy’s best moves, but more importantly, she was used to fighting vampires, demons, and various other things that were as strong as or stronger than her — such as the Slayer. She also, probably, had the advantage of knowing all her own tells. Before she knew it, her Spike had somehow gotten behind Eyeliner Spike and put her arm around her throat, launching the two of them forward through the shimmer.

She fell to the ground alone, and picked herself up, dusting the grave dirt off her shirt. “Your bloody turn,” she said to Mina. “Get rid of Oliver Twist and let her get back to playing pretend.”

Mina blinked, and looked around. “That might be a problem.”

The teenaged Spike was nowhere in sight.

“Well, you _did_ tell her you were about to get rid of her,” Anya pointed out.

“This night just keeps getting better and bloody better,” Spike said, and took in a deep breath, setting off towards the trees.

“Good thing there’s no Slayer in the woods looking for vampires who are hunting humans,” Buffy noted.

“Well, while she’s doing that,” Xander said. “Mini-me, do you want to take mini-mini-me through?”

Willow raised her hand. “Wait, I want to hug him.”

The youngest Xander nodded vigorously.

“She’s way out of your league, buddy,” said teenage Xander. “Also, gay.”

Willow dropped to her knees and hugged him anyway. “I missed you, little Xander,” she said. “You’re going to kick ass in soccer in gym class next year. And don’t eat the chicken at Jesse’s birthday party in eighth grade. Also, tell me not to eat the chicken.”

Teenage Xander took little Xander by the hand and they went up to the shimmer. Then he paused. “Wait. Which way did we come through?”

“Um,” Xander went back to where he had been standing with Buffy when it had happened. “I was here — ”

Buffy left the three of them to figure it out. Spike was out of her tingly-range, but she peered into the woods anyway.

“He’s not going to remember the chicken thing,” Anya told Willow. “Which I’m fine with, by the way.”

“I know, I just needed something to say.”

“I wish I’d known him when he was that age,” Buffy said wistfully. “Look how cheerful he looks.”

Willow nodded. “Oh, yeah. He was totally the class clown. More than in high school, because, you know, we were all in one class. He had this bit he did where — ”

“Okay, we’re ready,” called teenage Xander.

It was a little weird how completely child Xander disappeared the second he walked across the line where the shimmer was. It wasn’t like he faded — he just winked out, as if he had never been there. “All right, buddy. Your turn,” said adult Xander. “Just remember, when you’re feeling down, you get to date Anya in a couple of years. Don’t mess it up like I did.”

Teenage Xander looked over, and when Buffy glanced at Anya, she was looking down, mouth quivering.

“Now, I definitely don’t remember which way I went in, so —” Xander grimaced. “This is going to be a total guess.”

Teenage Xander vanished.

“Hey, got it in one!”

“He’s not going to remember that,” Anya said softly.

Xander gave her half a smile. “I mostly just wanted you to hear it.”

Anya’s face twitched. “I’m going home,” she said. “I think Spike can figure it out.”

Willow put her hand on Xander’s shoulder after she had turned on her heel and left. “Well, it was worth a try.”

“Very smooth,” said Dawn.

Buffy nodded. “Making with the patented Xander sweetness.”

Xander scuffed his shoe on the ground. “Thanks for the pity compliments, guys. I’m going to go home and tell this story to half a beer, then wonder if I’m becoming an alcoholic, then pour the rest of the beer down the sink, then go to bed.”

All four girls went in for the hug at the same time. Xander accepted it with grace. When they let him go, he waved at Mina, standing a little bit away from the knot of arms.

“Bye, good Spike.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Harris.”

That left the five of them staring at the shimmer. It was about eight inches across.

Dawn hummed. “So, do you think she’ll be back in time?”

“Vampires are apex predators,” said Buffy. “I think she can handle a teenager in two hours.”

Willow raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t _you_ the apex predator?”

“Oh.” Buffy brightened. “Yeah. Actually, I am. Slayer beats vamp.”

“I could have done a locator spell for her,” Tara said.

Buffy shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to do now but wait.”

By the time Spike returned, a squirming teenager thrown over her shoulder, it was about 10:30. “I am not going to sodding kill you,” she snarled. “You are me. Also, I can’t. What about this is so difficult for you to understand?”

Teenage Spike kneed her in the chest. She grunted and swore. “She is going to be in _such_ a bad mood later,” Dawn whispered.

“Mina! Get your skinny arse over here and take this back!” Mina hurried over and then fell when Spike dumped the teenager into her arms. “I have to do bloody everything around here,” Spike growled, and then hauled them both up and shoved them through the shimmer.

“And then there was one,” said Willow cheerfully. “Or, well. Two. I meant one extra.”

Dawn darted forward to hug Mina again. “I wish you were going to remember me,” she said.

Mina wrapped her arms around Dawn’s waist. “I wish I would remember you also.”

“Can I braid your hair again?”

“No, but you’re welcome to help me with a proper bun; that was what I was wearing when I came through.”

Spike made a little angry noise. “This is so bloody touching, but I’d really like to get rid of you now.”

“Shh,” said Dawn imperiously, and took down the messy bun to start working on a neater one.

Spike looked at the sky as if she was praying for strength, but obeyed. Buffy’s mouth twitched. Spike was all about the Big Bad thing, but she folded like origami when Dawn crooked her little finger.

When the two of them finally walked through, Mina’s hand on Spike’s elbow again, everyone watched quietly while Mina winked out. Spike took a deep breath on the other side. “Thank christ.”

“Well, this has been fun,” Willow said. “Dawn, let’s go home. School night.”

Spike’s jaw was working again. “You can go too, Slayer. I’ll watch it until it closes.”

Buffy shrugged. “No, I’ll stay.”

They waited until the others had left before Buffy spoke again.

“So... do you want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about. She’s not here. I’m what’s bloody well left, so I’ll have to do.”

Buffy jumped up to sit on the wall, which was still the perfect height for making out, even though Spike very much did not look like she was in the mood. “You know, I totally was not into Mina. At all. No butterflies.”

Except — she remembered that one smile, and maybe that wasn’t a hundred percent true. One butterfly. One butterfly barely counted.

“Could have fooled me.”

“Apparently we did, since you’ve been moody for two days straight. You know you don’t have anything to be worried about.”

“Don't I?” Spike looked at her, face hard and impassive in that way that meant that she was probably right on the edge of either crying or flying into a rage. “Get my body plus a perfectly good sodding soul. Sounds like your dream. No moral conundrum.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “I am way, way past the moral conundrum, Clementine.”

“Call me that again and I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.”

“Going to go all Big Bad on me?”

“I need a cig,” Spike said, ignoring her, and shook one out of her pack, lighting up in a way that was about as twice as aggressive as it needed to be.

“So… no.”

“ _No_ ,” Spike growled. “You know I won’t. Because I bloody well _have_ gone soft.”

“Also, I can still totally kick your ass.”

Spike snorted. “Yeah, prob’ly.”

They sat there staring at the shimmer while Spike sucked down her cigarette.

“So what did she leave you with, exactly?”

“We did _not_ have sex.”

“I know.” Spike tapped her nose, and Buffy grimaced. She hated to be reminded of the fact that Spike could smell things like that, even though it was really hot in the moment sometimes. “Although _something_ got you going in there.”

Buffy groaned. “I soooo hoped you weren’t going to notice that.”

“Fat chance of that.” Spike flicked her cigarette over the wall after she stubbed out the butt, and then got out a second one. “Pavlovian reaction to the scent of you getting wet. So, what was it?”

“Eyeliner Spike,” Buffy said, and shuddered. “I have _no_ idea what’s wrong with me.”

Spike looked at her like she had just suggested they go sunbathing at the beach for a date. “So you’re telling me girly lil Mina didn’t get you going, but the me who wanted to _murder you_ did it for you?”

“I don’t really think I’m into the whole girly thing. It looks wrong on you.”

Spike’s shoulders looked like they relaxed, at that. “Feels wrong, too. Just thinking how my tits’d look in that bloody halter top makes me want to cut ‘em off. Bet she felt the same way all day.”

“Also, I don’t know. The whole grunge punk thing was hot.”

Spike grinned, briefly, and Buffy knew that she’d mended the rift enough that they probably weren’t going to get into a screaming match. “Want me to get my tongue pierced, Slayer?”

Buffy hadn’t actually noticed the tongue piercing, but the thought of it was a definite yes. “…kind of.”

“Wish granted. My tits were pierced then, too.”

“Jury’s still out on that one.”

“Be bloody scorching on you, though.”

“I’m not getting pierced anywhere I get punched, which is everywhere,” Buffy told her.

“Yeah, that’s why I took mine out. Also, Dru kept pulling ‘em out, and I was getting pretty sick of waiting for them to heal so I could get ‘em re-pierced.”

Buffy winced. The times she felt most removed from Spike were the times when she blithely described some fucked-up thing that she and Drusilla had done together as if it was normal. “Ugh.”

Spike shrugged one shoulder. “So, you didn’t answer me.”

There was only one question that applied to.

“She told me about herself.”

Spike looked like she was about to wring someone’s neck. Buffy wasn’t personally worried about hers, and there was no one else around, so she ignored it. “Yeah? What did she tell you?” the casual words were belied by the fact that the tone was practically ground glass.

“Lots of stuff. You don’t really talk about before Drusilla turned you. I was curious.”

“That’s because I’m not that person anymore.”

“I mean — ” Buffy hummed. “You kind of are.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Do you want to tell me what your real issue with her is?”

Spike sighed. “It’s the whole thing, pet. She’s a woman who acts like a woman even though she doesn’t feel much like one. She’s got the sodding soul. She’s nice, and safe, and palatable. And I’m a bloody — bulldyke vampire who barely even managed to convince you I’m capable of feeling love and spent loads of time trying to do you in.”

“Apparently I think that’s sexy.”

Spike barked a laugh, but it sounded bitter. “ _I_ know you do. You just don’t want to.”

“I mean, you know how ridiculous this is, right?” Buffy looked at her, rocking on the wall. “She’s got an expiration date in like a month and lives more than a hundred years in the past. Plus, I knew her for two days. I was never going to choose her over you. I just wanted to know more about who you were before you got all with the bitey.”

“And who was I, Slayer?”

“You were you,” Buffy said simply. “Just scared. Do you still write poetry?”

“Of course she — ” Spike rolled her jaw. “No. It was shit poetry.”

“Hmm. I asked her to recite one, but she said they were about other girls.”

“And what, you were hoping I’d done one up for you?”

Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of you doing them for everyone _but_ me.”

Spike’s grin was now wide and genuine, the anger vanished like a summer storm. “Jealous, kitten?”

“Yeah, kind of. I mean, how many times have you been in love? Because I feel like I heard about a million other girls today.”

“Please tell me she didn’t tell you — ”

“About Evelyn from when you were fifteen?”

“Bugger. That _bitch_.” They watched the shimmer for another few minutes. Then Spike said, “’ve been in love a couple of times. _Thought_ I’ve been in love a lot of other times. But you’re my only girl, Buffy. You’re it for me. And I don’t like you seeing me when I was busy being a bloody coward. She dies a virgin, you know. Never even kisses a girl. Too bloody repressed.”

“Weird, because she can _totally_ turn on your charm.”

Spike’s face darkened. “Now you’re just trying to make _me_ jealous, pet.”

Buffy smiled at her, guilelessly. “Is it working?”

“You know it is, you little minx.”

She hooked her finger in the top of her own t-shirt and tugged it down a little, fluttering her eyelashes. “Maybe you ought to come over here and reclaim me.”

The dark look wasn’t gone, but it really just enhanced the expression of want that slammed onto Spike’s face. “What, you want to get drilled, kitten? Want me to make you sorry?”

Buffy sidled up to her and tipped her head back, baring her throat and bringing her shoulders together to emphasize her cleavage. “I want…” she murmured, “…you to tell me why you were such a bitch to her.”

Spike went from unashamedly raking her eyes over Buffy’s body to frowning. Then she sighed, and gave Buffy what she wanted, which, when it came right down to it, she usually did. “I don’t like much who I was then, all right? Never could stand those sodding dresses. Never felt right. Hair never felt right. But you saw that horrible bloody thing she decided to wear today. You know why? Didn’t want to let everyone know she doesn’t feel like much of a woman, even now, when I’m walking around showing her she can. Probably would’ve gotten married if some vaguely unobjectionable bloke had asked, just to make mum happy. Popped out a couple of horrible little brats and resented them.” She snorted, looking a little pained and not exactly meeting Buffy’s eyes. “Had to get killed before I could admit to myself what I wanted. Never felt so bloody alive as when I died. Point is, pet, she was an idiot. She wasted so much time. Hard not to resent her a bit.”

Buffy hummed, dropping the pretense of seduction. “And you thought — what, I’d be super delighted by the stammering? That that’s my type? Because: big no.”

“Look, I’ve always said you need a little monster to keep you satisfied,” Spike told her, looking like she knew she was walking a tightrope between happy Buffy and mad Buffy, which she absolutely was, since that sounded like some of her old bullshit. “Not exactly sure how much _a little_ is, though.”

“I think Mina is approximately zero percent monster.”

Spike laughed mirthlessly. “Too right. Wouldn’t hurt a bloody fly. That’s all demon, baby.”

“It’s not really very make-sense-y of you to say you were jealous and then tell me why you shouldn’t be.”

“It’s not about Mina.” Spike wasn’t looking at her, and her teeth were bared. “It’s about me.”

Buffy leaned her head against Spike’s shoulder. “I’m glad you got there on your own. I really thought I was going to have to work harder for that one.”

“I’m not a _complete_ idiot, y’know.”

“I know, but sometimes you play one on TV. Are you going to talk to me about it?”

There was a little pop, and both of their heads snapped up, but the shimmer was gone, and nothing was there. Spike huffed. “There it goes. Bloody good job, too. Three of Harris is too much for me to stand sober.”

“Pretty sure he felt the same way about four of you.”

“ _I_ felt the same way about four of me.”

“I can totally put eyeliner on you, though, right?”

Spike flashed her a grin. “Anything you want, Slayer.”

“ _After_ you talk.”

Spike looked at her. Took a deep breath, which was a funny habit of hers considering that she didn't need to breathe. She looked vaguely as if she were facing a firing squad, face twisted into a grimace. “ — you’ve more’n given me my chance. Think I’ve done fairly well so far. Think it’s going well, that is.” She stood up off the wall and walked forwards, pacing towards the duster she’d left on the ground during the fight and picking it up to sling it over her arm. When she turned back, she took another breath. “But it still feels shaky, Buffy. Can’t lie to you about that. ‘m not sure you’ll keep me. And it was hard seeing you get all snuggly with somebody like you sometimes think you want.”

"I know what I want, right now, actually." Buffy hopped up off the wall to intercept her as she came back, putting her hands on her hips and then wrapping her arms around her waist. She knew it would be most appropriate to say _Of course I’ll keep you_ , but she couldn’t guarantee the truth of it, and Spike knew that. So instead, she laid her head on Spike’s chest and said, “Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah.” Spike dropped an arm around her back, and rested her chin on top of her head. “Well, no more interrogation, yeah? I think I’ve done more than enough soul-baring in one night for someone who hasn’t got one.”

“Okay. You’re off the hook.”

“Haven’t got any eyeliner there, but if you want to stay the night at mine — ”

“Uh-huh.”

“I _am_ going to take all that flirting out on your arse, though.”

Buffy stuck her tongue out. “Do your worst, vampire.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here it is, folks, the bookend porn. couldn't not be tribbing since tribadists is probably what mina would have actually said about them instead of friends of sappho in chapter 1. 
> 
> currently working on 3 other things for this verse: sprusilla prequel, sexy eyeliner spike roleplay, and thanksgiving comedyfest. i'd say the thanksgiving thing is probably the most likely to get finished because it's been very fun to write. i'm picking where it goes by rolling a d12 every so often. so far it's devolved into three separate fights and a bunch of people are drunk.
> 
> let me know what else you want if you want more butch spike. thanks to whoever actually read this. hope we have all enjoyed ourselves

“I think you’ve smoked an entire pack tonight,” Buffy complained.

“I’ve seen three of me tonight after a century of no mirrors. Let me have my stress relief.”

“And who’s going to relieve _my_ stress?”

Spike held up two fingers. “Love, you tell _me_ who’s going to relieve your stress.”

“I don’t know. The last time you made me even more stressed. Because you made me _late_.”

“To a job you bloody well hate. With a mouth you bloody well love.”

The moon was high above Restfield, and they had been winding their way through the cemetery circuit since the shimmer had winked out sometime near midnight. Spike had agreed that a patrol after they’d been off for a night would be a good idea — better not make it two nights — and they had made relatively quick work of the few fledglings they had come across, and let a demon go after he’d said, “Spike! How’s it going!” And Spike had replied, “Brilliant, how’re the kids?”

“I do love it,” she said impulsively. “Your mouth.”

Spike gave her a grin.

“Mina’s was pretty nice too.”

The grin dropped. “Ham-handed at best, Slayer.”

“But it worked.”

“You really are asking for it.”

“I’m asking, all right.” Buffy gave her a smile, and leaned against a gravestone. “Show me who I belong to, Spike.”

Spike’s saunter turned into a deadly sort of prowl without a hitch in her step. “You’re my girl.”

“I said, _show me_.”

Spike was right up on her now, hands finding either side of the gravestone she was leaning on and trapping her against it, getting so close to her they were nearly kissing but, at the last moment, murmuring against her lips instead. “You're _my girl_ , Slayer.”

Buffy put her hands on the sides of her face and stroked up those carved cheekbones. Spike was still a breath away from her; they were sharing air that Spike didn’t need. She ran her fingers back through the short-cropped blonde hair and sighed, just there, against Spike’s mouth. Then she said, softly: “You say I need a little monster.” She took a deep breath, and checked herself for second thoughts. Finding none, she continued. “So — show me a little monster.”

And, to her credit, Spike didn’t need any prodding. She slipped around the side of the gravestone, winding up behind it, and pressed her mouth to Buffy’s throat from behind. Then her jaw. Then, against her ear, a hoarse whisper. “ _Run_.”

She ran.

Spike’s footsteps behind her were silent on the grass, and she pushed her muscles just that little bit harder, putting on a burst of speed. If she were running from something else, she would start weaving in the gravestones to put obstacles in their path, but Spike, she knew, was more than capable of leaping them at speed, so instead she broke for the field. Footstep for footstep, she would bet on Slayer strength to keep her ahead in an open run.

The tinglies that she usually ignored around Spike were hammering at her now, telling her there was a powerful vampire hot on her tail as she tore through the graveyard. Her instincts — to fight, not to flee — were confused, but when she hit the steps of Spike’s crypt and the end of the road, and Spike slammed into her back, pinning her against the door, they kicked in: she struggled for a moment before the body against her back disappeared.

She turned, panting for air, and saw Spike standing back from her, holding up her hands like Buffy had a gun to her. A monster with restraint. A monster who loved her. A wave of affection — or was that adrenaline? — swept over her, and she smiled and leaned back against the door, crooking two fingers at Spike to beckon her closer. “Come get it,” she said, breathless.

Spike was back on her without having to be told twice, hands going to the backs of her legs to hike her up against the door, mouth against hers as she lifted her until Buffy’s face had to tip down to keep up the kiss. That was new, considering how everyone she had ever dated had been significantly taller than her — the only way she’d ever kissed down to anyone was horizontally, and that barely even counted.

Buffy’s arms wound around her neck, one hand tangling in the short back of her hair and the other gripping at the leather of her duster. Her legs went up around Spike’s waist and squeezed — maybe too hard, but Spike just moaned and grabbed her by her ass to hold their bodies together, other hand sliding up her leg to her waist.

The really nice thing about kissing Spike, other than the fact that she had a hundred and something years of practice, was that she was more responsive than any of Buffy's boyfriends had ever been. Gasping into her mouth, shivering her shoulders closer when Buffy pulled on her hair, making little subvocal growling noises when Buffy bit her. It was impossible not to notice that what you were doing was right, right, right.

She slid her hand out of Spike’s hair and down across the door until she found the handle. It was never locked, and when she pushed on it they toppled inside, falling hard onto the concrete with Spike on top of her. It knocked the wind out of her, reminded her of their first time — destroying that warehouse — and, like then, she leveraged her hips to turn over and slam Spike into the floor beneath her, writhing on top of her until she pushed herself up off the stone into a sitting position and attacked Buffy's neck with her mouth as she pushed the leather jacket off her shoulders and slipped her hands up Buffy’s shirt.

“Give it to me,” Buffy murmured, in the few moments she had without Spike’s mouth on hers. Her lips felt swollen and sensitive, her body on fire while liquid heat pooled between her legs. “Give me what she couldn’t.”

They tumbled over backwards and then Buffy was beneath her again. The side seam on her t-shirt popped, and then Spike was tearing it off over her head, leaving her hair a mess between them, getting in their mouths when they kissed. The bra Spike slipped a finger under the band of and waited, and when Buffy gasped, “yes,” she popped it, splitting the fabric right in half, and tossed it to the side, leaving her bare-backed on the stone floor while Spike crawled down her body, cool mouth leaving a hot trail against her skin.

This was usually about the time when Spike would start husking out nasty little promises into her ear. Telling her what she was going to do to her. Instead, Buffy grabbed her face and pulled her up from where she had just kissed down to the slope of her belly, and hauled her up to look her in the eyes. The pupils were blown wide, and the light wasn’t good enough for her to see the thin rim of blue that must be wrapped around them. She was looking at Buffy like she was something beautiful, something edible. The way she always did.

“ _Give it to me_ ,” she ordered again, and then hauled off and slapped her. Spike’s head snapped to the side, and when it turned back, her eyes were yellow, reflecting the light like an animal's, and the demon was there — bumps, ridges, fangs, and all. It was the shock more than the pain that had done it, and Spike looked bewildered for a moment even with the whole bat face on and then smiled. It was an eerie look on her game face, all sharp teeth and predator eyes, and Buffy shivered with something that wasn’t the cold when Spike lowered her head to her neck, tracing the very tip of one razor-sharp fang over her skin before she began to kiss down again.

“Can smell you, Slayer,” Spike told her, lisping very slightly around her teeth, before she twirled her tongue around Buffy’s nipple and then blew a thin stream of air over it to peak it into a diamond-hard point. “Thick in the air.” The other breast, now, and then her hands were on them, her thumbs circling them, slick with saliva. “Wet for me. Soaked and dripping. And looking at this ugly mug. You get this wet for all the demons, sweetheart?”

Buffy put her hands back on Spike’s cheeks and pulled her up again, just like she had before she had smacked her into vamping out. “Not ugly,” she breathed, although it wasn’t strictly true. It wasn’t — _pretty_. But then, Spike was never pretty, although she was often exceedingly beautiful, and this look suited her oddly, the way the long hair and pink top hadn’t. “Mine.”

The snarl that rolled out of Spike’s lips was more guttural and more menacing when she had this face — these vocal cords — on and operating, but Buffy knew better than to think it was anything but pleasure. “Yours,” she agreed. “Your Spike.”

“My Spike,” Buffy said, and pulled her down for a kiss, fangs and all. It cut her lips, sure. Her tongue, a little bit, when she tried to taste the edge of one of those deadly sharp teeth. Spike’s nose was in a different place, and her mouth moved differently. But it was still Spike kissing her — desperate with passion, sucking on the tip of her tongue, making soft little humming noises into her mouth to tell her how much she was loving it.

That rush of affection was back as the clawed hands stroked up her sides, as Spike did her level best to kiss her throat gently through her fangs. It was endearing even though the whole _point_ of this was the demon. A point Spike apparently wasn’t totally in line with her on.

She stroked a hand through Spike’s hair and then tugged lightly. “Where’s my monster, huh?”

Game face slipped away, and Spike bent down to lick the blood off her lips. Slayer healing would take care of the little cuts by dawn, but vampire saliva would help. Face impassive, Spike brushed Buffy’s hair back off her face. “You sure about this?”

“I’m sure sure.” She had a _point_ to prove. And, well. She was dating a vampire. She couldn’t promise forever, but she could at least show her that she wasn’t exactly running from that fact — pun not intended.

“You want the face?”

“Yeah.”

Spike’s brow twitched. She wasn’t very good at remaining deadpan, at least not here. Buffy could see something hopeful behind her eyes. “Want me to bite you?”

“You always bite me.”

“I mean _really_ bite you, Buffy.”

“Mmhmm.” It hadn’t been so bad, when Angel had done it, at least until she had started getting light-headed. There was that first sharp latching pain, and then it had been pure relief until the world had started to go all tilty. “Just a little, though.”

The blue eyes closed, then, after a long moment, they slid back open, hazy. “I love you.”

“So love me, then.”

Spike took a deep breath and shook her shoulders out like she was about to go into a fight. “Hit me again. Got me hot.”

“Wait,” said Buffy, and sat up. “I want your coat first. It’s cold on your floor.”

“We could go downstairs — ”

“Coat.”

Spike sat up to pull off the duster, and Buffy used the time to kick off her shoes and wriggle out of her pants before Spike was wrapping her in leather and laying her back down on the floor. The coat was too big for her, and smelled like cigarettes and booze. The vampire’s lips twitched, looking down at her, and she bent to lay a kiss on Buffy’s nose. “Thing’s come full circle, going back to a Slayer. Looks good on you, pet.”

“Everything looks good on me.”

“’Nothing’ looks better, if you ask me.”

Buffy backhanded her without any warning, and earned herself a snarl and two golden eyes staring hungrily down at her. “Pig,” she said, primly.

“Best in show,” Spike replied instead of the traditional _oink oink_. “Spread ‘em, girl.”

“You are _not_ going down on me like that.”

Spike laughed. “What, fangs good enough for your throat but not for your pussy?”

She made no effort to crawl down her body, though, and it was usually her first stop on the way to fucking Buffy senseless, so it was clear that the message was received. Buffy went to slap her again, but Spike caught her wrist in midair and pinned it to the floor, letting out a growl that sounded a lot less friendly than the last one.

Buffy parted her knees just enough for Spike to muscle her way between them, and then they were off to the races.

The first time she had seen a vampire with the face fully out she’d screamed. Now she wasn’t even scared, although that was probably because she knew Spike wouldn’t hurt her. The demon surfacing hadn’t changed the feel of the slim waist between her legs, hadn’t changed the feel of the soft cotton shirt under her fingers when she brought her hand up to pull insistently on the back of it. “Off,” she said.

Spike set the tips of her fangs against the shell of Buffy’s ear. “Don’t think you’re giving the _orders_ , Slayer.”

“I’m not the Slayer,” Buffy told her. “Just a woman.”

That got her another grin, toothy in what was possibly the worst way; all shining fangs and wicked, curling lips. It didn’t turn her off — it would have, once, she was sure, but she felt safe even though it was an objectively terrifying expression. “That why you’re not tearing that shirt right off me?”

Buffy stretched under her and widened her eyes innocently. “I can’t.”

Spike rolled her eyes and stripped it off, a little break in the action. Hands now free, Buffy took the opportunity of Spike sitting up to wriggle out from under her and scramble for the door.

The irony was that the coat tripped her, and even while Spike was pinning her back down she couldn’t stop laughing at it, even as Spike rolled her over and held her wrists down with one hand. It was maybe good for the fantasy that she was too weak with laughter to break free accidentally, but bad for the fantasy that she was laughing at all. It was hard to help while they were in bed together sometimes. She’d never had more _fun_ with anyone. Spike kissed her for the laugh, just like she always did, 

“Vamp like me doesn’t let their prey get away like that,” Spike told her, pulling back as the giggles were subsiding. With her free hand, she popped the latch of her belt and then shoved down her jeans over her hips, not bothering to push them past her knees. “Not a pretty little thing like you.”

Buffy made a show of struggling against the hand at her wrists, and if Spike weren’t playing along with her little game, she might have rolled her eyes again, but instead she just gave a quelling growl and Buffy subsided with a terrified whimper that she didn’t feel at all.

“You going to behave now?” Spike asked, and then when Buffy nodded her head furiously, released her hands and sent her own immediately to Buffy's knees, pushing them up to expose her to the shining demon eyes. “Still wet,” she said, an approving purr. “Always so wet for me. You know what, love?” Spike flicked her tongue out to taste the air, looking somewhat reptilian. “Don’t smell a bit scared, either. Think you’re loving this.”

With that she started to move, grinding her cunt up against Buffy’s, and Buffy wasn’t faking her gasp at that, hands flying up to claw against Spike’s back. It was too strong for a normal woman, probably, but Buffy wasn’t actually a normal woman, so she decided not to care, letting Spike press her knees down so that she could get in further between her legs. This was a position they weren’t often in without a strap-on between them, and for that, Buffy never had to spread so wide. She knew from past experience that her thighs would ache for a little while if Spike made it last as long as she usually did.

“Ah,” she said, eloquently, when Spike’s pelvic bone rubbed up against her clitoris. Her fingers gripped uselessly at Spike’s shoulders, letting her set her own pace instead of driving her to her own. That was part of being a normal woman, she thought. Not being able to push your vampire lover around.

Spike bent to rumble in her ear, lips brushing the shell of it, one razor-sharp tooth barely grazing her. “This get you hot, lover? Getting pinned down by one of those things that goes bump in the night?”

“So — oh — not sexy.” It took genuine effort to get out the sentence and to roll her eyes, when it was usually so easy. Spike was rutting against her, slim, powerful muscles twisting under her skin as she ground their hips together, like she was trying to get inside her like a man would, the hard bump of her clit rubbing up Buffy’s slit and against her own. The effect of her denial was sort of ruined by the little noises she was making as Spike’s body rippled over her.

“Not sexy, huh?” The golden eyes pulled up to meet hers, the teeth glinting in the low light. “Feel like you think it’s pretty sexy. All slick for me.” When she rolled her hips there was a slick noise as their cunts slid together. She lowered her head to Buffy’s throat, and inhaled deeply, tongue flicking out to catch a taste of her pulse. “ _Smell_ like you think it’s pretty sexy.”

Buffy widened her eyes just enough that Spike would know she wasn’t serious, and bit her lower lip. “Is it going to hurt?”

To her surprise, Spike didn’t play along, leering at her in a way that made her look like every other stalking monster that prowled the alley behind the Bronze. Her voice was derisive, curling into Buffy’s ears and making her squirm. “Oh, _sweetheart_ , it’s not like I don’t know I’m not popping your cherry. You’ve been here before.”

One clawed finger traced the scars of bitemarks on her neck, the slightly marred ones from Angel’s desperation and the Master's cruelty and the neat, barely-there remnants from Dracula. Spike’s hips twisted sinuously, pride flickering over her face when Buffy arched underneath her, pressing them more firmly together.

“Girl needs a little something extra, doesn’t she?” Spike crooned. “Need a little pain with your pleasure, kitten. A little _bite_ , you might say.” She bared her fangs, and they flashed in the light. “Want somebody who can hold you down and fuck you properly into the floor. _Through_ the floor.”

If Spike didn’t want her a defiant virgin, she would play a defiant slut. She scraped her fingers sharply over Spike’s broad, muscled back, and said, voice jolting in time with the way their bodies were coming together. “How would _you_ know what I want?”

A sharp laugh, harsh through the filter of the demon’s face. “I know _exactly_ what you want. Every dirty little thing you touch yourself to. You want _this_.” One clawed hand dragged lightly down Buffy’s breasts, leaving trails of heat behind the nails as they lightly scratched her skin. “ _This_ , love, fast and bloody hard,” and she leaned close to breathe in Buffy’s ear as she rocked her hips urgently against her body.

Buffy writhed under her, feeling the skin stretched over the muscles of Spike’s back giving way under her nails. She flexed her core, meeting the thrusts until the friction built almost unbearably. “Yes, _yes_ — ”

“Too hard for any man to give you, Buffy. You need a demon for a fuck like this. Need me. Need — ”

“Oh, god,” The wave she was cresting finally peaked and she heard Spike’s ribs creak as her knees squeezed them, spasming as her orgasm hit her like a train. “Spike — ”

“ _— this_ ,” Spike breathed, cool and urgent against the skin of Buffy’s throat, her fangs pricking the skin lightly, but never entering it.

“Oh, now, now,” Buffy cried.

Spike’s teeth sunk in without a hitch, frictionless. There was a flash of pain at the piercing, but then just the slight tugging of her continued motion as white burst behind Buffy’s eyes. When she realized that there was no sucking pull of blood exiting her body, just the stinging pleasure of fangs in her throat, she gripped Spike by the back of the head and gasped:

“Like you _mean_ it — ”

There was only the low sound of a groan against her neck and then there it was, the singing in her body that she had felt when Dracula bit her, that had been overcome by panic when Angel did. The pulse of Spike’s teeth and tongue against her, her mouth drawing her in.

She came again, fingers tightening in the hair at the nape of Spike’s neck, other hand clawing across the scrapes she had made the first time. It felt like it was sparking through her body, like her nerves were overloading on her and the room was flickering in and out of reality.

Spike released her when she had stopped shaking, taking gasping pulls of breath like she had forgotten she didn’t need to breathe. Her mouth was immediately back where it had been, tongue stroking across the wound as her face shifted back, and then she was kissing it, sucking until Buffy was fairly certain she was bleeding again and there would be a fantastic bruise there tomorrow.

“Hey,” she panted, tugging on the back of her hair again, “With the mauling.”

“I love you,” Spike told her, raising her face. “God, I love you, Buffy. My perfect girl.”

Buffy softened her hands and stroked her back. “I think I got your coat a little wet.”

Spike chuckled, low in her ear, lips still warm from her throat. “Gonna be a mess every time I wear it, smelling you.”

They lay there for a while, just breathing against each other, Spike occasionally whispering praise in her ear. The leather beneath her was warm, and with her vampire laying on top of her, it was about as comfortable as concrete could be. Which… was still very not with the comfortable. Just as she was about to start complaining, Spike picked her up off the floor, still wrapped in the duster, and held her against her chest like a koala as she walked across the room. Buffy had time to wonder how she was going to get down the ladder before she just dropped through the hole and into the bedroom. She landed without her usual near-silent grace, but she didn’t drop Buffy, just straightened out of the crouch she had fallen into and took her over to the bed, letting her down.

“Come here,” Buffy told her, and sat up, letting the too-big collar of the duster fall down around her shoulders, pooling at her arms and waist.

Spike obeyed her wordlessly, crawling into bed after her and twitching the covers back to let her wiggle under them. “You going to keep that on all night, love?”

“Thinking about it,” Buffy said, looking down at it. “It’s warm.”

“So’s bed.”

“Yeah, but _you’re_ cold.”

“I’m dead.” The smile Spike gave her only touched one side of her mouth, looking wry and reaching out to stroke her fingers along the lapels of the coat where it hung over Buffy’s breast. “Sleep in my coat, baby, see if it bothers me.”

“I think it makes your demon brain go all demony,” Buffy told her, and slumped down against her lap, head resting against her thigh while she picked up a cigarette and lit it. “Because I look all _yours_. It’s like a big tattoo on my forehead that says ‘property of Spike’.”

Spike snorted. “Think those marks on your throat will do that up proper.”

“Yeah, but the coat smells like you.”

“ _You_ smell like me.” Spike stroked fingers through her hair, straightening out the tangles she’d gotten during the tussle. It was more like being petted than anything, and with the leather warm around her and the familiar smell of cigarette smoke above her, she felt comfortable and worn out, like she could sleep in until noon. Admittedly, it was probably sometime in the wee hours of the morning, so sleeping until noon might be normal, but it was more of an emotion she was feeling than a specific wish.

It was almost an impulse when it slipped out of her mouth, head tilting back to look up at Spike’s angular face from below. “I love you.”

The hand in her hair stilled. A cloud of smoke drifted out of Spike’s mouth, and she glanced down, face tight with either hope, or fear, or some heady mix of the two. “Buffy — I told you, you don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not just saying it.” Spike was silent, but kept meeting her eyes. Buffy smiled at her, not widely, but just enough, hopefully, to make the conversation more friendly than tense. “I’m not promising you forever. But _right now_ , I love you. I have for a while. You, um. You make me feel alive.”

The choked sob that that pulled out of Spike was unexpected. She sat up quickly, furrowing her brow and reaching out.

“I didn’t mean to — are you — ”

Spike took her by the face and cut her off with a kiss, which quivered with the force of her emotions. “Say it again, pet.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

This was starting to get embarrassing, like she had said it once and it wasn’t enough. Like there was something wrong with it. “I love you. How many times — ”

“As many times as you’ll say it to me, love. Every time you see me for the rest of your life, if I had my way.”

Buffy grinned at her. “I love you.”

“You keep that up and I’m going to have to have you again.”

“Like you weren’t going to in fifteen minutes anyway.”

“That was supposed to make you say it again, Buffy.”

“I love you, Spike.”

Spike took her by the waist and pressed her down into the sheets, hovering over her. “Tell me what you want to do to you.”

For a moment, Buffy wasn’t sure what she wanted. She had never really been — well — gifted with talking dirty the way Spike seemed to effortlessly be. She started to lose her words when it started to feel good, and as a matter of fact, she just wasn’t as comfortable with the words. But then she saw the look in Spike’s eyes and knew, instantly, exactly what she wanted her to say. “Make love to me.”

The smile this time was Mina’s from the field, open and sweet. “ _There’s_ my girl.”

“Make love to me, Clementine,” Buffy told her, voice low and husky.

She shrieked with laughter when Spike swore.

**Author's Note:**

> (clears throat) clementine


End file.
